Comment on how Herbert's poems are part of his spiritual autobiography his experience of prayer and how they spring out of his realisation of the gulf between the human unworthiness and divine grace. Quote lines from his poems to support your argument. ( MEG 101 ) ( GEORGE HERBERT )

Herbert's poems are undoubtedly part of his spiritual autobiography, reflecting his personal experiences and struggles with faith and prayer. In his poems, Herbert often expresses his sense of unworthiness and sinfulness in the face of God's divine grace and love. For example, in his poem "The Collar," Herbert writes:

I struck the board, and cried, "No more;

I will abroad!

What, shall I ever sigh and pine?

My lines and life are free, free as the road,

Loose as the wind, as large as store.

Shall I be still in suit?

Have I no harvest but a thorn

To let me blood, and not restore

What I have lost with cordial fruit?

Sure there was wine

Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn

Before my tears did drown it.

Is the year only lost to me?

Have I no bays to crown it,

No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted,

All wasted?

Here, Herbert expresses his sense of restlessness and dissatisfaction with his own sinfulness, and his desire to be free from the burden of his guilt. In the poem "The Windows," he uses the metaphor of windows as a way to express his longing to see and know God, despite his unworthiness:

Lord, how can man preach thy eternall word?

He is a brittle crazie glasse:

Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford

This glorious and transcendent place,

To be a window, through thy grace.

In these lines, Herbert acknowledges his own fragility and imperfection as a human being, and yet he also expresses his faith that through God's grace, he can be made worthy to be a vessel for divine light and wisdom. Throughout his poems, Herbert grapples with these themes of sin and redemption, doubt and faith, and his struggles to reconcile his human weaknesses with his spiritual aspirations are part of what make his work so powerful and enduring.