George Herbert, born in 1593, was a busy man: he served two terms as a member of Parliament, held the post of public orator at Trinity College, was ordained as a deacon, and as canon of the Lincoln Cathedral, he worked to become a pious servant of God, using his own money to improve his church and help the needy rather than exploiting that position to line his own pockets. While doing all this over the course of his short life of only 39 years, Herbert also managed to write the poems for which he is most remembered: those works of verse collected in a manuscript entitled The Temple.
Herbert’s premature death one month shy of his 40th birthday was the result of a lifelong battle with bad health fatally compromised by tuberculosis. Realizing that death was imminent and utterly unavoidable, Herbert sent that manuscript to a friend he’d trusted all his life, Nicholas Ferrar, with one simple request: depending solely upon his own critical evaluation, either burn it or get it published. Ferrar's decision to pursue the manuscript's publication has been vindicated by history, and The Temple has enjoyed continuous, widespread acclaim since its publication in 1633.
Oddly, The Temple enjoyed incredible commercial success in the first fifty years following its publication, before suddenly and thoroughly falling out of favor for the next century. A newly printed edition at the dawn of the 19th century just as suddenly and thoroughly brought the poetry of George Herbert back into public favor. In the early 20th century, important modernist poet T. S. Eliot’s praise of Herbert brought him back into fashion once again. Since then, Herbert has been considered a canonical example of “metaphysical poetry” as well as Christian devotional poetry.
