"The Altar" is a poem by the Welsh-born poet and Anglican priest
George Herbert
George Herbert (3 April 1593 – 1 March 1633) was an English poet, orator, and priest of the Church of England. His poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he is recognised as "one of the foremost British devoti ...
, first published in Herbert's collection ''The Temple''. As an example of
shaped poetry, its popularity in the 17th century is attested by several imitations and a musical setting.
Publication and shape
''The Temple'', the book in which the poem was first published, was only printed in 1633, after Herbert's death. "The Altar" is the first poem in the section titled ''The Church'' and, along with "Easter Wings", was one of two
Baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
shaped poems there. The poem represents an altar in its shape on the page and is the second written by Herbert involving altars. The other is shorter and was originally written in Greek.
This earlier poem provided a model for the later piece and has been referred to as a "meditation and a prayer". It does not resemble the English poem in shape, however.
[
The English poem's form was inspired by Classical (or "pagan") altars and the old Greek poems written to reflect their shapes.]Greek Anthology
The ''Greek Anthology'' ( la, Anthologia Graeca) is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the Classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature. Most of the material of the ''Greek Anthology'' comes from two manuscripts, the ''Pa ...
'', in which such surviving poems appeared, first introduced English readers to the form in 1555.[ Over the course of the poem's republication, the altar's shape has been altered to reflect later ecclesiastical attitudes rather than those at the time of ''The Temple's'' first printing.][
]
Content
Like most others in ''The Church'' section of ''The Temple'', "The Altar" is a devotional poem. The three that preceded it had expressed didactic themes. Here the shorter and longer lines are arranged on the page in the shape of an altar and the visual appeal is reinforced by the Baroque conceit of its being constructed from the poet's stony heart to serve as "a broken Altar" that is "cemented with teares", on which he offers himself as a sacrifice. Built into this is an allusion to Psalm
The Book of Psalms ( or ; he, תְּהִלִּים, , lit. "praises"), also known as the Psalms, or the Psalter, is the first book of the ("Writings"), the third section of the Tanakh, and a book of the Old Testament. The title is derived ...
51:17: "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart." In terms of the section's developing theme, the following poem is titled "The Sacrifice". However, that shifts the focus from the poet's personal devotion in "The Altar" by being written as a soliloquy of Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
on the cross.
Beyond its emblematic function, "The Altar" inspired several explicitly ekphrastic poetic responses that were published later in the 17th century. The piece was also set to music then, most likely in an arrangement by John Playford
John Playford (1623–1686/7) was a London bookseller, publisher, minor composer, and member of the Stationers' Company, who published books on music theory, instruction books for several instruments, and psalters with tunes for singing in churc ...
.
References
External links
The Altar
{{DEFAULTSORT:Altar Herbert Poem
British poems
1633 poems