The Temple
George Herbert1633Herbert showed that devotional poetry could be formally inventive, emotionally honest, and genuinely beautiful at the same time.
Read this if you…
- like devotional poetry that argues with God before submitting (Herbert wrestles, doesn't just praise)
- want 'experimental' shaped poems for the 17th century (poems shaped like altars, wings, etc.)
- care about 'Love (III)', one of the most quietly perfect religious lyrics in English
Skip this if you…
- haven't already read shakespeare and donne
Why It Matters
Herbert showed that devotional poetry could be formally inventive, emotionally honest, and genuinely beautiful at the same time. His shaped poems and quiet intensity influenced everyone from Vaughan and Traherne down to Eliot and Heaney. He's the standard English religious poetry gets measured against.
The 
Take
Solid almost prayer like poems, some cool “experimental” forms for the time too
Where to go next
- The Complete English Poems by John Donne. The Temple built on it. - The metaphysical voice of *The Temple* is Donne's voice domesticated — speech-rhythm, blunt diction, the seizing conceit - The connection was personal: Donne was Herbert's godfather and preached at his mother's funeral - Read Donne first and you'll hear what Herbert inherited — the same wrestling intensity, now aimed at faith instead of love
- Psalms by David. The Temple built on it. - *The Temple* is a seventeenth-century Psalter — Herbert took the Psalms' full range of praise, lament, and penitence as his model for addressing God - The debt is structural as well as thematic: "The Church" has the same number of poems as the Psalms parceled out across the Anglican liturgical calendar - His paraphrase of Psalm 23 — "The God of love my shepherd is" — shows the source in the clear; read the Psalms first and Herbert's whole architecture comes into focus
- Colossians by Paul. The Temple built on it. - The poem titled "Coloss. 3.3" is exactly what it says — Herbert citing Paul and turning the verse into form, the line "My life is hid in Him" running diagonally through the text - Colossians 3:3 gives the poem its whole idea: a life hidden with Christ, hidden so completely that Herbert hides the line itself inside the poem - Read the source verse and the trick clicks — the page is doing what Paul says
Depicted in Art
Two ten-line stanzas typeset sideways across facing pages, lines tapering then widening to form the silhouette of outspread wings.
1633
Young George Herbert seated reading to his mother Magdalen in a domestic interior, an intimate scene of pious upbringing.
Charles West Cope, 1872
Herbert in cassock standing in his rectory garden by the river Nadder, prayer-book in hand with a finger holding his place, Salisbury Cathedral's spire rising over meadows behind him; fishing tackle leans against a tree.
William Dyce, 1860
Recommended Editions
Penguin Classics
2017
John Tobin's Penguin is the readable scholarly Herbert, with careful notes on the devotional context and his stance toward the Church of England. The Temple plus the rest of the surviving verse, none of it overannotated.
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Deep Dive
What It's About
This summary gives away plot details.
Notable Quotes
“I struck the board, and cried, 'No more! I will abroad!'”
“I struck the board, and cried, "No more; / I will abroad!"”