In George Herbert (1593-1633), profound religious sensibility is richly
allied with a playful wit and with literary and musical gifts of the
highest order. Herbert experimented brilliantly with a remarkable
variety of forms, from hymns and sonnets to pattern poems, the shapes of
which reveal their subjects. Such technical agility never seems
ostentatious, however, for precision of language and expression of
genuine feeling were his primary concerns. Herbert is one of the finest
religious poets in any language, though even secular readers respond to
his quiet intensity and exuberant inventiveness. The poems he made
achieve a perfection of form and feeling, a luminosity and a
metaphysical grandeur unexcelled in the history of English writing.
Though long overshadowed by Donne and Milton, Herbert has come to be one
of the most admired of the metaphysical poets. In this new edition of
Herbert's works, the distinguished scholar and translator Ann Pasternak
Slater shows through detailed textual notes, a reordering of the poems,
and an extensive introduction just how great a writer Herbert is.