TFS 9,2: Tell All the Truth but Tell it Slant: George Herbert

The Faber Sessions #9 Part 2 on George Herbert, presented by Rick Ganz.

George Herbert (1593-1633) was considered one of the brightest men in Anglican England of the early 17th century, and was a contemporary of William Shakespeare. He was in the largest part of his short life the principal “Orator” of Cambridge University, where he was called “the jewel” of the University. But during the last three years of his life, he chose to commit his life, full-time, as the Pastor of a rural parish (from 1630-1633), through which work he pursued a life of exemplary holiness. His large collection of poems, discovered and published only after his death in 1633 (he died of Tuberculosis), was given the name The Temple by the editor of this first edition of Herbert’s poems.

The personal example he was - his lived, holy life during the last three years of his life, when he served as Pastor - was widely recognized and admired. And the poems from this period (nearly his entire collection of poems) had a significant impact on poets of his time and in the centuries that have followed.