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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... voice identifiable with the snake in the Garden of Eden . And it is that sibilant , satanic voice which invokes the Matthean reference in the final line . ' I think we have not , ' I said The Word and the Poets 59 59.
... voice in arguments with themselves and with God . For Herbert the arguments were intensely per- sonal , manifestations of his struggle to submit himself to overcome his own prideful sense of unworthiness , to discern and submit himself ...
... voice from the Cross , this story , this grief , that Herbert returned again and again . Against it , all of Herbert's own griefs and perturbations of mind and spirit could be measured and ulti- mately absorbed as are those of any ...
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 |