...mother a New Year's gift in the form of a letter consisting of two sonnets and a pledge, saying that "for my own part, my meaning (dear Mother) is in these...Abilities in Poetry, shall be all, and ever consecrated to Gods glory."2 It was a number of years, however, before Herbert turned his entire life explicitly toward...

...would 'reprove the vanity of those many Love-poems, that are daily writ and consecrated to Venus . . . For my own part, my meaning (dear Mother) is in these...Abilities in Poetry, shall be all, and ever consecrated to Gods glory' (Herbert 363). In addition, Baldwin's play with unusual verse forms suggests a similar...

...the young Herbert sent a pair of sonnets to his mother along with a letter announcing his intention that "my poor abilities in poetry shall be all and ever consecrated to God's glory," an intention clearly announced in the opening lines of the first sonnet: Why are not sonnets made of...

...that look towards God and Heaven'. He informed his mother that, by means of the sonnets, he intended 'to declare my resolution to be that my poor Abilities in Poetry, shall be all, and ever consecrated to Gods glory . Sources. H.'s youthful sonnets inevitably borrow from the very tradition of love poetry...

...Herbert and in the development of English poetry. "In these sonnets," Walton reports him as saying, "I declare my resolution to be that my poor abilities...shall be all and ever consecrated to God's glory." Herbert, thus early discovering himself to be a poet, here fixes the field most suitable to his genius....

...his early age to virtue, and a serious study of learning." At seventeen he wrote to his mother — "my poor abilities in poetry shall be all and ever consecrated to God's glory." Some of his earlier poems, written at this period, breathe a devoted spirit of piety. Music, too, was...