This course will study five major poets, English and American, who wrote about their personal relation to God, religion, and/or the transcendent. Readings are in the poetry of John Donne, George Herbert, Emily Dickinson, G. M. Hopkins, and T. S. Eliot. The last third of the course will focus on The Four Quartets. It will treat the poets as writers and as religious thinkers. The approach will be both internal -- reading selected poems carefully -- and comparative, reading the poets in relation to one another. The course will require a final paper and perhaps a mid-term exercise. Undergraduate: (C, E, G) Graduate: (Med/Ren)