Virtue Analysis

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky,
The dew shall weep thy fall tonight;
For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie,
My music shows ye have your closes,
And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like seasoned timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.

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"Vertue", juxtaposes the pessemism shown towards everything mortal inevitbaly dying, with a celebration that the vertuous soul shall live forever.

| Posted on 2009-10-26 | by a guest

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this poem means that He describes the day as something calm, bright and he compares it to the mariage between a women and a man, but besides all these beautiful things it must die when the night falls.
In the second stanza he describes the rose with its beautiful colour and powerful at the same time. However its root is always in the ground so, like the day it must die.(in this stanza the rose is described as a person who like the rose ends in its grave)
In the third stanza he discribes the spring as a box where the days and the roses are put together and different smells are enclosed in it. But like the day, the spring i t also must die because it will not last forever.
Only the sweet and virtuous soul with last forever. Even when the whole world will dissapear in flame, the virtous soul will survive

| Posted on 2009-09-27 | by a guest

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Virtue never dies he stated in this poem.Even all the things die in this world but still the virtue will remain forever and nothing could possibly do to erase it.

| Posted on 2009-08-26 | by a guest

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this just means that "VIRTUE" is everlasting, eternal, endless and perpetual... that's it!
everything in this world will soon find its end, but virtue will always remain unfading.

| Posted on 2009-03-04 | by a guest

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George Herbert`s virtue is a poem which celebrates the immortality of the virtuous soul. He describe the virtue as something eternal, permanent. In order to show this he compares the virtuos soul with the day, the spring and the rose in the three preceding stanzas.
He describes the day as something calm, bright and he compares it to the mariage between a women and a man, but besides all these beautiful things it must die when the night falls.
In the second stanza he describes the rose with its beautiful colour and powerful at the same time. However its root is always in the ground so, like the day it must die.(in this stanza the rose is described as a person who like the rose ends in its grave)
In the third stanza he discribes the spring as a box where the days and the roses are put together and different smells are enclosed in it. But like the day, the spring i t also must die because it will not last forever.
Only the sweet and virtuous soul with last forever. Even when the whole world will dissapear in flame, the virtous soul will survive

| Posted on 2009-02-02 | by a guest

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In "Virtue," which comprises four quatrains altogether, Herbert reflects on the loveliness of the living world but also on the reality of death. Building momentum by moving from the glory of a day to the beauty of a rose to the richness of springtime, while reiterating at the end of each quatrain that everything "must die," Herbert leads the reader to the last, slightly varied quatrain. There, the cherished thing is not a tangible manifestation of nature but the intangible substance of "a sweet and virtuous soul." When all else succumbs to death, the soul "then chiefly lives." Not through argument but through an accumulation of imagery, Herbert contrasts the passing glories of the mortal world with the eternal glory of the immortal soul and thereby distinguishes between momentary and eternal value.

| Posted on 2008-09-10 | by a guest