Notes
1] store: ample goods, abundance.
5] The length of the lines decreases to reflect their content, diminished man.
10] Herbert alludes to the paradox of the "fortunate fall" or felix culpa. Only by sinning with Eve, and being cast out of the Garden of Eden into a world of labour, pain, and death, did Adam enable the second Adam, Christ, to redeem man and show a love and forgiveness that otherwise could never have been.
18] feel: "feel this day" in 1633. The two added words disturb the clear metrical scheme (which has six syllables in lines 3, 8, and 13) and are not found in the manuscript of the poem.
19] imp: Herbert suggests that if he adds his feathers to God's wings, he will fly the higher because of God's might. Sometimes feathers were grafted or imped into a falcon's wing to increase the power of its flight. Note that this metaphor suggests that the wing-like stanza on one page represents Herbert's wings, and the wing-stanza on the facing page represents God's.
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: George Herbert, The Temple. Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (Cambridge: by Thomas Buck and Roger Daniel, printers to the University, 1633): 34-35.
First publication date:
1633
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1999.
Recent editing: 2:2002/2/13
Rhyme: ababacdcdc
Form note: Pattern or concrete poem. The two stanzas are set side-by-side on opposing pages, lengthwise down the page. The reader must turn the book counterclockwise, so that right-hand page is at the top, and the left-hand page underneath it, in order to read the text. The two stanzas thus look like two pairs of wings in mid-flight.