George Herbert was an Anglican priest who spent much of his brief life serving as a parish priest, died at the age of thirty-nine on this day in 1633.
He was also a poet, possibly the greatest of the crowd called Metaphysical. The Wikipedia article about Herbert tells us “Charles Cotton described him as a ‘soul composed of harmonies’. Some of Herbert’s poems have endured as popular hymns, including ‘King of Glory, King of Peace’ (Praise): ‘Let All the World in Every Corner Sing’ (Antiphon) and ‘Teach me, my God and King’ (The Elixir). Herbert’s first biographer, Izaak Walton, wrote that he composed ‘such hymns and anthems as he and the angels now sing in heaven’.”
Simone Weil once wrote to a friend “I hereby include the English poem that I recited to you, Love; it played a big role in my life, for I was busy reciting it to myself at the moment when, for the first time, Christ came to take me. I believed I was merely resaying a beautiful poem, and unbeknownst to myself, it was a prayer.”
The Anglican communion celebrates today as a feast.
As well they should…
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