"Denial" is a religious lyric poem by the English Metaphysical poet George Herbert (1593–1633). It was first published posthumously in 1633 as part of his collection The Temple, a series of poems exploring the complexities of the Christian spiritual life and the relationship between the soul and God.
The poem is noted in literary criticism for its "mimetic form," a technique where the physical and rhythmic structure of the verse reflects the internal emotional or spiritual state of the speaker. "Denial" depicts a speaker experiencing spiritual desertion and the perceived silence of the divine. The poem is composed of five stanzas, each containing five lines. In the first four stanzas, the speaker describes his prayers as "disorder'd" and his soul as "untun'd." To reflect this lack of harmony, the rhyme scheme in these stanzas is deliberately left incomplete; the fifth line of each stanza does not rhyme with any of the preceding lines, creating a sense of auditory and structural discord.
In the final stanza, the speaker moves from lamentation to a direct petition, asking God to "cheer and tune" his "heartless breast." This stanza achieves formal resolution as the final line ("And help me to rhyme") successfully rhymes with the second line ("time"). This structural "mending" of the poem symbolizes the restoration of spiritual order and the answering of the speaker's prayer.
While "Denial" is a common title for various contemporary poems and literary works, the poem by George Herbert remains the primary subject of academic and encyclopedic reference under this title in the context of English literature.