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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... reason : man does not serve his Creator by rejecting reason , but by aligning it with God's will . For all his breast - beating and self - deprecation , Herbert also asserted in his poem " Man , " My God I heard this day , That none ...
... reason is not to deny reason , but to grasp a truth which , until recently , has been eclipsed in Western thought , that reason is only one way of knowing . Let us look again at Thomas's descrip- tion of his purpose : " Primarily I'm ...
... reason as a gift of God , he had little confidence that it could carry man very far toward God . As he makes clear in " Giddi- nesse " reason is as much a source of man's errors as of his knowledge . And finally it is not his ...
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 |