Just as the poem is the basis for all the poems that follow, so too are its lines a 'picture' (literally and metaphorically) of the first stages of one's relationship to God. 'The Altar' is the first poem in the 'The Church.' This makes sense when you consider that the altar (a special table used in religious ceremonies) is probably the first thing you would notice upon walking into a church. The first part is a long poem called 'The Church-Porch,' the second part is called 'The Church' and contains many of Herbert's most famous poems (including 'The Altar'), and the third part is another longer poem called 'The Church Militant.' As you've probably gathered, these sections were labeled to correspond roughly to different parts of a church (the entrance, the church itself, and the entire community of believers). The Temple is today recognized as one of the most important volumes of poetry produced in the seventeenth century.

In the same letter we just mentioned, he described his poems as a 'picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt God and my soul.' Clearly, Herbert saw poetry as a way to come to terms with one's religious faith, and he hoped that his poems might guide others in the same way he guided them as their parish priest from 1630-1633.

Now, Herbert was a priest when he died, a deeply religious man. Herbert included the following instructions to Ferrar: 'if he can think it may turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul, let it be made public if not let him burn it for I and it are less than the least of God's mercies' ( source).įerrar didn't think twice, and Herbert's poems were published later in 1633 in a volume called The Temple. Realizing that maybe, just maybe, somebody would want to read the poems he had painstakingly composed, Herbert arranged all of them into a nice little book and sent it to a man named Edmond Duncon, telling him to give it to a guy named Nicholas Ferrar. He had written an entire volume of poetry and hadn't really done anything with it. Shortly before he died in March, Herbert had a decision to make. This is the same disease that would kill John Keats nearly 200 years later. He had been suffering all the classic signs of tuberculosis-or consumption as they called it back then-for months. By January 1633, George Herbert knew the end was near.

Love 3 by george herbert