The Transience of Earthly Beauty

Repeatedly, throughout the sixteen lines of “Virtue,” Herbert asserts beauty's transitory nature. His warning is not that people themselves must die but that the things that delight people while they are alive must pass away. The word “thou,” repeated in the last line of each of the first three stanzas, serves as an address to each of the day, the rose, and the spring. The word does not refer to the poet himself or to the reader, even if one hears associative and suggestive echoes in those directions. Consequently, Herbert's poem does not assume the character of a threat. It serves, rather, as an instrument devised to wean both poet and reader off dependence on the visible world for joy and spiritual nourishment in order to redirect both poet and reader to the inner cultivation of virtue.

The Interconnection of Life and Death

Besides...