Easter-wings & Herbert

I know Kerth has pointed out alot of good things from Herbert's Bio along with from his poem Easter-Wings. I'm just going to go over different areas of the biography as well as different ideas I have come up with from Easter-Wings.

George Herbert's Biography- His family was quite wealthy and interesting to see that his mother was dedicated the Holy Sonnets by John Donne. Herbert's first two sonnets were sent to his mother in 1610 at the age of 17, right off the bat his poetry evolved around God. Herbert along with his mother had been loyal Anglicans, George was so loyal to them he became an active oppenent of the Puritans and Calvinists. You can see how high of ranking the family must have been by seeing John Donne delivered the funeral sermon his mother's funeral. In 1630 Herbert became rector at Bemerton, he'd do this until his death 3 years later. In the Biography this is when we really find out what kind of man he is. Herbert took his own money to help rebuild the church because he cared that much for his parishoners. He died at the young age of 40, which honestly is ashame because he could have produced many more good things if it hadn't been for his long period of ill health.
Easter-Wings-As kerth has pointed out the stanzas are setup in an interesting structure so that each stanza either starts good and ends bad are vice versa. The first stanza can be summed up as the fall of man from "wealth"(that in holiness) into the "decaying" of life in sinful nature. Thus we see by the width of the stanza it starts good and ends bad. In stanza two we see that Herbert wants to be with the Lord in the sky during his ressurrection. By the end of the stanza the speaker, whom I believe to be Herbert himself, he's completed the 2nd wing. The 3rd stanza starts off good and ends bad; he said in the beginning of his life it was sorrowful and says he wasn't free of punishment. By the end of this stanza he's saying that he's lost purity. Stanza four of course ends good because it is the end of the poem. Herbert tells the lord that he wants to be part of the victory, but not just part of the victory he wants to be a part of the Lord's wing. This ends the poem with Herbert wanting to be very close to the Lord, which is similar to real life because Herbert is so religious.

The imagery in the poem is really present, you can almost feel what's happening in the poem. Not to mention the visual appearence of the stanzas as well..