When Wendy Cope came across George Herbert's work as an adult, she took to it immediately.
What especially appealed to her was Herbert's playful delight in poetic form, and the fact that these playful poems are, at the same time, utterly serious.
In an affectionate introduction, Wendy writes, 'there is ample evidence in Herbert's poems of a struggle with worldly ambition'. Certainly, he was well connected: his mother was a friend of John Donne, who was later to preach at a memorial service in her honour; Lancelot Andrews, one of the translators of the King James Bible, was another close friend.
In the 1930s, T. S. Eliot asserted that Herbert is 'a major poet', and since then his reputation has gone from strength to strength. This collection, which includes 'Love' ('Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin...'), was described by Simone Weil, the French mystic and philosopher, as 'le plus beau poeme du monde'. It is one of many in Dare To Be True that will be treasured by a whole new generation.
