Some later editions also make the shaped intention clearer by drawing an outline around the text.

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. Publication of the Greek Anthology, in which such surviving poems appeared, first introduced English readers to the form in 1555. The English poem's form was inspired by Classical (or 'pagan') altars and the old Greek poems written to reflect their shapes. It does not resemble the English poem in shape, however. This earlier poem provided a model for the later piece and has been referred to as a 'meditation and a prayer'. The other is shorter and was originally written in Greek. The poem represents an altar in its shape on the page and is the second written by Herbert involving altars. 'The Altar' is the first poem in the section titled The Church and, along with 'Easter Wings', was one of two Baroque shaped poems there. The Temple, the book in which the poem was first published, was only printed in 1633, after Herbert's death. As an example of shaped poetry, its popularity in the 17th century is attested by several imitations and a musical setting. The last line, however, is perhaps Herbert’s most brilliant of the poem: the final expansiveness, the structural resting place of fullness in the poem, is the place of our fall from moments of proximity to God into further sin, powerlessness, honesty, limitation, and dependence upon God which, in time, will ultimately “further the flight in me.' The Altar' is a poem by the Welsh-born poet and Anglican priest George Herbert, first published in Herbert's collection The Temple. With God’s newly realized presence we rise again like birds, ascending emotionally and spiritually to praise – and yet, like Babel or Icarus or Saul or any other ascent of man, we must fall back down into our natural sinfulness. The spacially expansive first lines recalls humanity’s original glory, which narrows in the Fall (line 2), which continues to constrict into the emotionally bound and powerless place of utter poverty and abjectness – “most poor.” And yet it is here, in death to self that mimics Christ’s crucifixion, that the presence of God comes (“With thee”). In this stunning poem, Herbert approaches the beauty of cyclical ‘spiritual progress’ – the cycles of consolation and desolation by which the Spirit moves in us. Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store Though foolishly he lost the same, Decaying more and more, Till he became Most poor: With thee O let me rise As larks, harmoniously, And sing this day thy victories Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

Easter wings poem