George Herbert

George Herbert was a Welsh-born English poet, scholar, orator, and Church of England priest born at Montgomery in 1593. Educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, he became a fellow of Trinity and was elected Public Orator of Cambridge University in 1620, a prestigious position that brought him into contact with court and public affairs. He later turned more fully toward ordained ministry and in 1630 became rector of Fugglestone St Peter with Bemerton near Salisbury.

Herbert’s years at Bemerton were brief but formative. He repaired the small parish church and parsonage, served his rural congregation, and continued shaping the devotional poems that became “The Temple.” His prose work on pastoral ministry, commonly called “The Country Parson,” was published after his death and reflects the same concern for disciplined, practical Christian devotion.

Herbert died in 1633. His friend Nicholas Ferrar arranged the publication of “The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations” at Cambridge that same year. The collection includes “The Call,” whose opening became the hymn “Come, My Way, My Truth, My Life.” The exact year in which Herbert wrote the poem cannot be established securely, although it was first published in 1633.