Abstract:George Herbert’s “The Forerunners” has not been given sufficient attention as a text remarkably invested in The Temple’s poetic project of approaching God through the spatial categories of stillness and motion. The thematic keystone of “The Forerunners” lies in the poem’s refrain phrase “Thou art still my God,” particularly in the word still, which Herbert inserts into a famous scriptural line. By demonstrating the centrality of Herbert’s alteration of this line to the poem’s exploration of divine and human language, this essay reveals the fundamental, but often overlooked, spatial and motional framework controlling the poem. Interpreting the inserted word adjectivally, this essay argues that “The Forerunners” defines God through his stillness, and in attempting to use lyric form to achieve that same ideal, exposes Herbert’s poetry, and even The Temple’s famous search for God, as spiritually suspect, born of compulsive restlessness rather than devotion. But even as “The Forerunners” recognizes the loss of the swiftness of poetic language in the shadow of approaching death, it draws on both lyric and scriptural forms to embody God and the poem within a “livelier” spatial and temporal stillness.

中文翻译：

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“还是我的上帝”：乔治·赫伯特的“先驱者”与诗歌

摘要：乔治·赫伯特（George Herbert）的“先行者”（Forerunners）没有得到足够的重视，因为该文本特别投入到神殿的诗歌项目中，即通过静止和运动的空间类别接近上帝。“先行者”的主题重点在于这首诗的副词“你仍然是我的上帝”，尤其是在“静止”一词中，赫伯特插入了著名的经文行中。通过证明赫伯特对这首诗的改变在诗歌对神圣语言和人类语言的探索中的核心地位，这篇文章揭示了控制诗歌的基本但经常被忽视的空间和运动框架。这篇文章用形容词的方式解释了这一论点，认为“先行者”通过他的静止来定义上帝，并试图通过抒情形式实现同样的理想，从而揭示了赫伯特的诗歌，甚至精神上怀疑的圣殿大名鼎鼎的寻找上帝，都是出于强迫性的躁动而不是奉献。但是，即使“先驱者”意识到即将死亡的阴影下诗意语言的敏捷性的丧失，它也利用抒情和圣经形式在“更活泼”的时空静止中体现了上帝和诗歌。