“My Heart Hath Store, Write There”: Writing on and in the Heart in Herbert’s The Temple

Abstract

The writing metaphor, as found in the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah and in most visual depictions of Jeremiah, influences and inspires Herbert, but the issues become how and where the poet-parson writes the words. We hear God’s words sometimes in Herbert’s poetry, but they are, essentially, conveyed by the poet-parson as he struggles on the one hand to serve God and on the other to practice his craft both as parson and as poet. Herbert writes the words, as does Jeremiah, on the literal and the metaphorical page, sometimes destroyed, sometimes rewritten, and yet rewritten again. The word is not only spoken—for example, spoken or read during a sermon—but also written on the page and, more importantly, on the heart. This is heartwriting. As it was for Jeremiah, the heart becomes the crucial image in the works of seventeenth-century English poets like Herbert as well as many of the emblematists.