"The Corn and the Wine": Emerson and the Example of Herbert

Abstract

L T H 0 U G H Emerson's appreciation of the metaphysical poetry of George Herbert has scarcely gone unnoticed, no one has quite thought to cast Herbert in the authorizing/inhibitive role of precursor. The reasons would seem obvious enough. First of all, in general, Emerson's immense authority over subsequent (American) poetry and prophetic writing has often made it hard to think of his own literary projects as profoundly influenced. Secondly, in the particular case, the determined traditionalism of Herbert's piety and the elaborate sacramentalism of his symbolism appear simply alien to Emerson's secular habit of thought. And though there is only slightly more historical distance between Emerson and Herbert than between, say, Wordsworth and Milton, no high argument in Herbert seems in any way to forecast Emerson's revolutionizing doctrine of the original relation.'