In her introduction, Wendy Cope focuses on Herbert’s poetic ingenuity. In “The Altar” the poem is shaped like an altar; “Easter Wings” is shaped like wings.

Like many of us, I suspect, Wendy Cope first read – or sang – George Herbert’s poems in church. And perhaps, like many of us, during those sometimes not so gripping ser mons, she surreptitiously opened the hymnal to read the hymns and poems of George Herbert, Charles Wesley, Isaac Watts or – my favourite – Samuel Crossman’s “My Song is Love Unknown”.

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