Poets' Meeting: George Herbert, R.S. Thomas, and the Argument with GodGeorge Herbert (1593-1633) and R.S. Thomas (1913-2000), each a major English poet and an Anglican priest, lived in very different times, one before the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and industrialization, and one following. Yet the two men and their poetry bear striking resemblances: Both loved nature and music, both were pacifists, and both struggled with the claims of faith, the nature of the spiritual life, and the recurrent silences of God. This book demonstrates that when their lives and poems are studied side by side, each man enhances our understanding of the other. The first essay deals with their sense of calling as priests and poets. The work then explores topics that relate to their roles as parish priests: ministry, the Bible, the Eucharist, and prayer. Several essays follow dealing with broader questions of the human condition: faith, sin, love, reason and science, and nature. The work concludes by considering their poems about Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter. |
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... mind works . Some of the most abstruse and complex problems of nature have been solved , not by means of a process of reasoning , but as a result of a sudden intuition which was closer to the vision of an artist or a saint than anything ...
... mind and soul to the newly born in its cradle ? Was that a halo above it of molecules and electrons , with the metal gone hoarse trying to reiterate : Holy . Holy . Holy ? The first stanza seems conventional with the three wise men ...
... mind / was illu- mined . " This second sentence seems to intensify the sense of unease , for while the physical darkness lifts , no clear answers come . Indeed , what comes instead is the question that will challenge century after ...
Contents
Preface | 1 |
The Vocations of Priest and Poet | 13 |
Country Parsons | 36 |
Copyright | |
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Poets' Meeting: George Herbert, R.S. Thomas, and the Argument with God William J. McGill Limited preview - 2003 |