WorkGeorge Herbert
The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (1633) ? poem 'The Elixir' (also titled 'Teach me, my God and King') Inferred
George Herbert (1593–1633) · Cambridge: Thomas Buck and Roger Daniel, 1633
InferredSturgis gave Fuller George Herbert's *The Temple*, a gift she treasured immediately, declaring she would "keep and love it always."
ExcerptedAnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
Documented 1836–1850
Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)
Letters • Books • Journals • Notebooks • Manuscripts
Selected engagements, in chronological order.
Reprints, Memoirs passages, and repeat notes within a single manuscript are shown but never counted twice. Evidence for this work is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →
“From Herbert's Poems. Sin. Lord with what care hast thou begint as round! [...] Lord! take thy way; for sure thy way is best.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Notebook: Bouquet, 1836–1837." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (43); Box 6 (43).
Herbert's Temple cataloged as one entry per deduplication rule.
“I have never thanked for Herbert. You could not have given me any-thing I should have liked better. I will keep and love it always.”
Inferred Sturgis gave Fuller George Herbert's The Temple, a gift she treasured immediately, declaring she would "keep and love it always."
“Thomas a Kempis and George Herbert are constantly at my elbow”
Inferred Fuller mentions George Herbert as a book at her elbow, almost certainly his The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations, his sole major collection and the near-universal reference for Herbert in this era.
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
“Thou brought'st this little book, and didst diffuse / Oer my dark hour the light of Herbert's muse?”
Fuller, Margaret. "To E. C. with Herbert's Poems." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
“Herbert / Pitch thy behavior low, thy projects, high, / So shalt thou humble and magnanimous be. / Sink not in spirit: who aimeth at the sky, / Shoots higher much, than he that means a tree.”
“Herbert / Slight those who say amidt their sickly [heaths?], / Thou liv'st by rule. What doth not so but men? / Houses are built by rule, and commonwealths.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal April 1839." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (Box A); Box 5 (99).
“O, that I were an orange tree, / That busy plant! / Then should I ever laden be, / And never want / Some fruit for him that dresseth me.”
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860.
Inferred This is a verbatim quotation from George Herbert's poem 'Employment (II)', found in his collection The Temple (1633). / Then should I ever laden be, / And never want / Some fruit for him that dressed me.' Fuller's quotation uses 'dresseth' instead of 'dressed', a slight variant that may indicate she was quoting from memory or referencing a different edition.
“It seemed but tuning of the breast / To make the music better.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
“Who sweeps a room, as for Thy sake / Makes that and th' action clean.”
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860. · p302
Inferred Margaret Fuller quotes (with minor orthographic normalization) from George Herbert's poem 'The Elixir' in The Temple (1633).
“Prayer — the church's banquet angel's age / God's breath in man returning to his birth / The soul in paraphrase heart in pilgrimage / The Christian plummet, sounding heaven and earth.”
Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846.
“fearing that may not in my "cross-biased" be permitted till strength of feeling and keeness of perception be less than during these bygone rich, if troubled years.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Hudspeth identified this explicitly as a "favorite poem," suggesting long familiarity with Herbert's work and her return to it for comfort and poetic expression.
“To all who will, it may be true, that, as Herbert says: Sundays the pillars are On which Heaven's palace arched lies; The other days fill up the space And hollow room with vanities;”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
“Heaven, whose course has ever been to cross-bias me, as Herbert said, is no niggard in its compensations.”
“I feel, like Herbert, the weight of "business to be done," but the bird-like particle would skim and sing at these sweet places.”
Inferred In an August 1842 journal entry, Margaret Fuller references George Herbert's poetry, writing of feeling, like Herbert, the weight of "business to be done," while still desiring to "skim and sing at these sweet places." This allusion suggests Fuller's engagement with Herbert's meditations on duty and spiritual life.
“To all who will, it may be true, that, as Herbert says: — "Sundays the pillars are On which Heaven's palace arched lies; The other days fill up the space And hollow room with vanities;”
Inferred Margaret Fuller engages with George Herbert's 1633 collection, The Temple, by quoting a passage from his poem "Sunday." This excerpt, "Sundays the pillars are / On which heav'n's palace arched lies; / The other days fill up the space / And hollow room with vanities," highlights Fuller's contemplation of the spiritual significance and perceived emptiness of secular time in contrast to holy observance.
“The method of Providence with me is evidently that of "cross-biassing," as Herbert hath it.”
Inferred This entry identifies George Herbert's The Temple (1633) as the source of Fuller's description of divine Providence as "cross-biassing." Fuller directly attributes this metaphor to Herbert, who uses it in the poem "Affliction (I)" to describe God's redirection of the speaker from their own path.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“She often quoted from Herbert "Who aimeth at the sky Shoots higher much than he who means a tree.”
Fuller, Richard Frederick. Recollections of Richard F. Fuller. Boston: privately printed, 1936.
Inferred Richard Fuller states 'She often quoted from Herbert' and then transcribes two lines verbatim.