Herbert, George – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk Henley-on-Thames Mon, 20 Oct 2025 13:02:22 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cropped-Bell-Background-Blue-32x32.png Herbert, George – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk 32 32 The Temple https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/the-temple/ Thu, 24 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/the-temple/ A collectible new Penguin Classics series: stunning, clothbound editions of ten favourite poets, which present each poet’s most famous book of verse as it was originally published. Designed by the acclaimed Coralie Bickford-Smith and beautifully set, these slim, A format volumes are the ultimate gift editions for poetry lovers.

On his deathbed George Herbert entrusted the manuscript of The Temple to his friend Nicholas Ferrar, asking him to publish it if he thought it was worthy. Herbert died in 1633 and the collection was published the same year to great acclaim, subsequently becoming one of the best-loved collections in the English language. The Temple is an astounding collection of verse poems: an extended meditation on man’s relationship to God that is characterised by Herbert’s clarity and directness of style. It includes such favourites as ‘The Collar’, ‘The Pearl’ and ‘Love’, with its beautiful opening lines: ‘Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back, / Guilty of dust and sin’.

]]> Herbert Poems https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/herbert-poems/ Fri, 24 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/herbert-poems/ Herbert experimented brilliantly with a remarkable variety of forms, from hymns and sonnets to “pattern poems,” the shape of which reveal their subjects. Such technical agility never seems ostentatious, however, for precision of language and expression of genuine feeling were the primary concerns of this poet who admonished his readers to “dare to be true.” An Anglican priest who took his calling with deep seriousness, he brought to his work a religious reverence richly allied with a playful wit and with literary and musical gifts of the highest order. His best-loved poems, from “The Collar” and “Jordan” to “The Altar” and “Easter Wings,” achieve a perfection of form and feeling, a rare luminosity, and a timeless metaphysical grandeur.

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