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George Herbert (1593-1633) was educated at Westminster School and Trinity, College, Cambridge, where he was appointed Reader in Rhetoric in 1618, and Public Orator in 1620. He was a Greek and Latin scholar, was fluent in modern languages, and an accomplished musician. In 1626, he resigned his seat in parliament and took holy orders, becoming Rector of Bemerton, a tiny rural parish on Salisbury Plain, in 1630. "The Temple", Herbert's great structure of poems from which the present selection is drawn, first appeared in 1633, the year of his death.

Selected by: Jo Shapcott