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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... regard for scripture , a sense of the spiritual value of nature , an investment in the life of the church , and a sense of the acces- sibility of the Holy in and through the ordinary and childlike " ( p . 37 ) . The “ distinctive ...
... regard typically Anglican . Thomas's poem " Suddenly " comes near to affirming God's presence at the altar , but not quite . Ulti- mately the elusiveness of God demonstrates the divine quality that Thomas saw as most characteristic : he ...
... regard the book of nature as the primary , if not the sole , source of divine truth . Given Thomas's pre- occupation with the absence / presence of God as well as his convictions about the limits of human reason , he not surprisingly ...
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 |