The Poems of George Herbert

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It is difficult to conjecture how much George Herbert’s return to the spiritual life was due to the sudden failure of royal patronage, and how much to his own devotion; but it is vain to pretend that it was at first an easy or a palatable change of front for him. ‘In this time of retirement’ [in London and Kent], says Walton, ‘he had many conflicts with himself, whether he should return to the painted pleasures of a court life, or betake himself to a study of divinity, and enter into sacred orders, to which his mother had often persuaded him. These were such conflicts as they only can know that have endured them; for ambitious desires, and the outward glory of this world, are not easily laid aside; but at last God inclined him to put on a resolution to serve at His altar.’ –From the Introduction by Arthur Waugh