happening on the Continent, or what was moving in the heart of the nation. The conflict abroad found no echo in English poetry. Vondel's imagination was agitated by every incident in the Thirty Years' War. Carew, when invited, declines to sing of the death of Gustavus—
"What though the German drum
Bellow for freedom and revenge, the noise
Concerns not us, nor should divert our joys."
Of the disaster that was to overwhelm those joys the poets express no foreboding. Only in Lycidas does the trumpet sound a warning note.[1]
Of the religious poets who followed Donne—the preacher as well as the poet—and voice the spirit of Herbert. Laud's reformation, the most influential and the most sustained artist was George Herbert (1593-1632), whose volume, The Temple, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (1633), was published in the same year as the poems of his master and friend were issued posthumously by his son. Like Donne, Herbert, for reasons that were perhaps mingled, had turned from worldly ambition to religion, and found an outlet for his temperament in asceticism and exalted piety. The crisis through which he passed is traceable in his poetry, and lends it a personal note of struggle, disappointment, and consolation which prevent it from degenerating into frigid Anglican didactic. For the general tone is didactic. There is something of the accomplished university orator and the winning parish
- ↑ Much of the poetry written during this period was not collected and published till after 1640.
