英语诗歌赏析
广东海洋大学外国语学院康翠琴
A Brief Introduction to George Herbert and His
Virtue
1.Introduction
This thesis aims to introduce a Metaphysical poet George Herbert and one of his poem Virtue in which virtue is sung highly of.
There are two parts in the main body of the thesis. The first part gives readers a brief introduction of George Herbert, his family and his writing styles. In the second part, the poem Virtue is analyzed in two aspects: musicality and image, added by an appreciation of the poem as an accompaniment. In the end of the thesis, what have been mentioned are brought to a conclusion to reveal George Herbert’s values toward life.
2.George Herbert and His Virtue
George Herbert lived in the period of Renaissance in the Great Britain, influenced by John Donne, the representative of the Metaphysical school, also by the religion of Anglicanism, most of his works praised highly of the God and beauty, which can be found in one of his poem Virtue.
2.1George Herbert and His Family
George Herbert, (3 April 1593 – 1 March 1633) was a Welsh poet, orator and priest. Being born into an artistic and wealthy family, he received a good education which led to his holding prominent positions at Cambridge University and Parliament. [1] His mother was a patron and friend of John Donne and other poets and one of his brothers was an important poet and philosopher, often regarded as “the father of English deism” which give little George an intellectual environment that is full of arts.
2.2George Herbert’s Writing Style
George Herbert was a religious poet as well as one of the Metaphysical poets. [2] His poems are characterized by “a precision of language, a metrical versatility, and an
ingenious use of imagery or conceits that was favored by the metaphysical school of poets”.
[3] Great talent can been found in his teenage hood. When at the age fifteen, George created his first two sonnets in which he expressed the theme of “the love of God is more honorable than that of a woman”. Since then he had made up his mind to devote all his life to the God. [4] His works The Temple, published in 1633, mainly sang the praises of the greatness of the God and conveyed his sincere devotion. Under the influence of Metaphysical poetry in which a primary Platonic concept can be found of the idea that “the perfection of beauty in the beloved acted as a remembrance of perfect beauty in the eternal realm”, [5] such beauty-advocating theme can be also found in George Herbert’s writings.
2.3General Analysis of Virtue
The poem Virtue, by three simple demonstrations of however cool, calm and bright, sweet day being replaced by the night; however angry and brave, sweet rose is bound to die; no matter how much sweet days and roses, sweet spring will gone finally, illustrates the eternal natural truth of everything will meet its end. However in the last stanza, the poet indicated that “only a sweet and virtuous soul” (virtue) can survive forever, which makes a bright contrast with the previous natural truth to highlight the theme of the poem.
2.3.1 Musicality
Musicality is embodied in two aspects of meter and rhyme.
2.3.1.1 Meter [6]
In poetry, meter is the specific pattern in which stressed and unstressed syllables are put together The Virtue has the beauty of rhythm, especially in the first and the last stanzas.
In the first stanza, as listed as follow, the bold capital letters stand for stressed syllables or arsis while the lowercase letters stand for unstressed syllables or thesis. And the punctuation of slash”/” divides different foots in each verse:
sweet DAY/ so COOL/ so CALM/ so BRIGHT!,
the BRIDA l/ of the EARTH /and SKY:
the DEW/ shall WEEP/ thy FALL/ to-NIGHT;
for THOU/ must DIE.
Generally speaking, in the above stanza there is a unstressed syllable followed by an
