The Temple by George Herbert

PRIMARY SOURCE: The Temple (1633)
Context

• Publication: Herbert graduated Trinity and worked as a Reader, than as an orator, at Cambridge. In 1624 he was elected to represent Montgomery in Parliament. He become Rector of Fugglestone in 1630, and died of TB three years later. There is a popular narrative set in 1633, when a dying Herbert gave his manuscript to Nicholas Ferrar with orders to publish or destroy. The narrative explains several salient factors. Nicholas Ferrar founded Little Gidding as an Anglican community in 1625, and in 1633 a scribecreated the Bodleian manuscript Tanner 307.
  I read a diplomatic edition based on Tanner 307, the Bodleian manuscript of Herbert's poems. Thomas Buck published a version of Herbert's collection in 1633, referred to by Mario Di Cesare as "a deft kind of Tottelization." (WELL I NEVER.) The book was printed in eight editions by 1690. EEBO link.
• Scholarship: In the ODNB, Colin Burrow set Herbert among the "central figures" of metaphysical poetry, along with Cranshaw, Marvell, and Vaughan. TS Eliot shaped discussion of the metaphysical poets, so scholars commonly debate Herbert's high-church tendencies, or his use of conceits. Stanley Fish summarized this debate between the catechistic and chaotic Herberts. Fish promoted a synthesis that ultimately favors the chaotic Herbert, though he found The Church Militant to be anticlimactic.
• Why I'm reading it: The Canon, ekphrasis, figure poetry.

Content

• Form: The Temple is divided into the Church-porch, the Church, and the Church Militant. The Church-porch is entirely in six-line iambic pentameter stanzas (ABABCC) advocating (first) virtues of moderate living, (second) social virtues, and (third) virtues of devotion. The Church is a mixture of poems devoted to church architecture, Biblical geography, the liturgy, scriptures, virtues, parable figures, and other rhetorical figures. The Church Militant is a progressive history in iambic pentameter couplets.
• Genre: Devotional poetry, metaphysical poetry.
• Conceit: The three sections of The Temple describe the church before, during, and after Christ's reign. The Church is the most interesting within this scheme, since Christ's presence through metaphor suggests that Herbert endorsed an amillennial eschatology.
• Other notes: "The Window" is of unique interest to my project.