The Gender of George Herbert’s Love

George Herbert’s “Love” (III) has long been considered among the finest lyrics in the English language. In the poem’s robust critical history, however, readers have never agreed on the genders of its two characters. This article argues that the poem represents figures who lack, exchange, and finally transcend gender. After surveying the history of homophobic and cisnormative accounts of “Love,” I turn to the contested anthropology of biblical gender and finally to contemporary transgender studies in order to reread Herbert’s poem as a narrative of gender abolition.