<p>The main purpose of this book is to demonstrate that George Herbert is one of the great masters of lyric poetry. Stein discusses Herbert&#39;s diction imagery syntax and rhythm in light of his organization of the imaginative materials of time and self-consciousness and in light of his development of a rhetoric through which he could master the intimacies of personal failure and (what is far more difficult) express in language convincingly sincere states of positive religious achievement.</p>