* * * * *

Crashaw, George Herbert, and Christopher Harvey all alike sound the
personal note in their religious poems. All three writers describe the
love of the soul for God in the terms of passionate human love: Crashaw
with an ardour which has never been surpassed, Herbert with a homely
intimacy quite peculiar to him, and Christopher Harvey with a point and
epigrammatic setting which serve only to enhance the deep feeling of
the thought.

In many a lyric of flaming passion Crashaw expresses his love-longing
for his God, and he describes in terms only matched by his spiritual
descendant, Francis Thompson, the desire of God to win the human soul.

Let not my Lord, the mighty lover
Of soules, disdain that I discover
The hidden art
Of his high stratagem to win your heart,
It was his heavnly art
Kindly to crosse you
In your mistaken love,
That, at the next remove
Thence he might tosse you
And strike your troubled heart
Home to himself.[69]

The main feature of Herbert's poetry is the religious love lyric, the
cry of the individual soul to God. This is the mystical quality in his
verse, which is quieter and far less musical than Crashaw's, but which