Virtue by George Herbert (Summary)

 

Virtue

by George Herbert

(Summary)

 

George Herbert (1593-1633) was a secular minded personality. His characteristics are rather unaffected, serene piety and human sympathy, leavened with humour. He uses many lyrical forms and often shows considerable artistry. The poem which best shows his spirit of his poetic gift is ‘Virtue’. His poetry is sensitive to the most delicate changes of feeling.

In his poem “Virtue”, the poet endows the elements of nature with the qualities of human behavior. Here he compares a day, a rose, spring season, etc., with the transitoriness of life which has an ephemeral quality.

“Virtue” is a poem from George Herbert’s collection of poems under the title of the “Death and Mutability”. The poems of this collection convey the idea that all beautiful, sweet, pleasant and good-looking things in the world are mortal and it is certain that they will come to an end. Our lives are short and they are not going to please us for long. “Virtue” is a is a beautiful short lyric containing sixteen lines only ranged in four stanzas of four lines each. In this poem Herbert gives expression to his belief that everything in this world – days, life or even spring is subject to destruction. But a virtuous soul is mortal and everlasting.

Summary

The poem deals with the theme of ever beginning nature of this world. All things which appear beautiful and pleasant in the nature do not remain so; they die very soon. The day is very cool, sweet and bright, but it is destined to die as soon as the night approaches. Dew drops express sorrow and grief on day’s death. Just like the fate of the day, the fate of rose is also in its ultimate death. Rose is a beautiful flower with bold and attractive colour even a passerby is forced to wipe his eyes and have a careful glance of it and admire its beauty. But it is also short lived and soon its roots would become its grave when it sheds its petal to the ground.

A day lasts for only eight – ten hours only and a rose may last for two-three days but the spring season seems to last for longer period. In this season the days are very sweet; beautiful flowers bloom everywhere. But even this pleasant season also is not long-lasting and soon it would give way to the cold, harsh and unruly winter. It is a bitter truth that this pleasant spring too would come to its end like all other things.

The poet is quite annoyed with the mortality of all-natural things and thinks over it – then what lives in the world forever. He concludes in the last stanza that all things in the world are destined to die but only sweet and virtuous soul would never die. Though the whole world may come to an end, yet the virtue would survive for ever and would never decay.