Authors: Herbert

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"George Herbert," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Biography at Poetry Foundation.

The Temple (1633; EEBO)

George Herbert (1593-1633) came from a noble family, and was educated at Westminster and at Trinity College, Cambridge (Milton and Donne's college). He taught rhetoric at Cambridge before becoming University Orator. Herbert was a Member of Parliament and later ordained and appointed deacon of Lincoln Cathedral, and later parish priest of St. Andrew's Church in Bemerton, a small rural community near Salisbury.

Herbert's poems were in manuscript until after his death. The Temple was published in 1633, "and their impact was enormous" (DNB). His poems are composed in an extraordinary variety of meters. Herbert shows his literary versatility and genius in every one. Herbert also wrote poems in Greek and Latin as well as prose texts.

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