ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

5
SUBSTANCE AND STYLE IN
GEORGE HERBERT’S THE
TEMPLE
Poetry is the revelation of words by words. Wallace Stevens
George Herbert might well have been an exemplary Caroline court poet: “I know
the wayes of Pleasure, the sweet strains,/The lullings and the relishes of it.” 1 But
he became instead England’s greatest devotional lyricist, and he did so in fine
Caroline style, with the publication of a single, though substantial, collection of
verse that appeared in print only because of the help of others. Indeed, style is
very much at the heart of The Temple: style as it includes issues of dress, the proper
mode and language of wooing, the shape of individual poems, the role of the self,
even the way one might respond to courtly games and some of the symbols and
devices most in fashion by courtier poets, like posies, roses, and emblems; but
style, too, as it is constantly, consciously, and at times cunningly played off against
substance as identified ultimately with Christ or God’s word.
The authoritative nature of this shift from secular to sacred is the subject of
the printer’s note to the reader that appeared with the first edition of The
Temple in 1633 and which is usually attributed to Nicholas Ferrar of Little
Gidding:
Being nobly born, and as eminently endued with gifts of the minde,
and having by industrie and happy education perfected them to that
great height of excellencie, whereof his fellowship of Trinitie
Colledge in Cambridge, and his Orator-ship in the Universities,
together with that knowledge which the Kings Court had taken of
him, could make relation farre above ordinarie. Quitting both his
deserts and all the opportunities that he had for worldly preferment,
he betook himself to the Sanctuaries and Temple of God, choosing
rather to serve at Gods Altar, then to see the honour of Stateemployments.
(p. 3)
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