21 pages • 42 minutes read
George HerbertEaster Wings
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1633A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Falconry
The penultimate line of “Easter Wings,” “For, if I imp my wing on thine” (Line 19), contains a reference to the practice of falconry in the word “imp.” Falconry is an ancient practice that involves the hunting of wild animals by means of a trained bird of prey such as a falcon, hawk, or eagle. Imping is the practice of replacing a damaged feather in the bird with another feather taken from a healthy bird. The healthy feather is “imped” or grafted onto the damaged feather of the other bird. In literature, Shakespeare uses the term metaphorically in Richard II, when the Earl of Northumberland urges his followers to “imp out our drooping country’s broken wing” by rebelling against King Richard II (Act 2, Scene 1, Line 303).
Herbert’s use of the term is interesting. The meaning is clear: In terms of the image of the ascending lark presented in the first stanza, he regards his own wing as broken, because he is a sinful man. He expresses the desire that it be grafted onto the perfect wing of Christ, so he can soar high too. However, Herbert actually reverses or inverts the normal use of the term and the practice. In imping, the healthy wing feather is grafted onto the damaged or decayed one, but in the poem, it is the damaged wing feather that is imped onto the perfect one. This reversal of the conventional practice is similar to the way the poet reverses the notion of the fall of man as solely a catastrophic event; it is a fortunate fall because it results in the incarnation and resurrection of Christ, the redeemer. In imping his faulty wing onto the unblemished divine wing, the poet is claiming a stake in the whole of Christ, not merely requesting that a small sliver of the divine should be grafted on to him to heal him. He wants not a sliver but Christ entire and complete; he hopes that he will be permitted to nestle in with the perfect wing of the redeemer and thus made as perfect and as blissful by this metaphorical imping as a mere man can be.
Original Sin
The motif of original sin informs both stanzas of the poem. It is referred to directly in Line 2 and is present in the first five lines of Stanza 2. The poet is a “fallen” man because by his very existence he is tainted by the sin of Adam and Eve, who disobeyed God and were expelled from the Garden of Eden. The notion of original sin became embedded in the Christian tradition very early in its history. It was, for example, endorsed by St. Augustine (354-430), one of the most influential of the early Church Fathers. Even infants were infected with sin, according to St. Augustine (and as Herbert implies in the first line of Stanza 2). St. Augustine also believed that original sin was evidenced by the fact that the human lot was a hard and wretched one, and that humans were enslaved to their selfish desires and to lust, and were habituated to ignorance of God.
Expansion and Contraction
A motif that occurs in both stanzas is that of expansion and contraction, a kind of rhythm that is a feature of the collective and individual life of the Christian. It relates to the believer’s relationship to God and the overall condition of his or her being. The expanded state is remembered at the very beginning of “Easter Wings,” because humans were created by God “in wealth and store” (Line 1) but then sin and the fall brought a contraction, a diminution of being, in which all humans ended up, like the poet, being “Most poore” (Line 5) and “Most thinne” (Line 15). This is followed, thanks to the resurrection of Christ, by the opportunity once more for expansion, conveyed in the image of the soaring lark singing at dawn.
Expansion and contraction might also be thought of as a movement from fullness to emptiness, followed by a return to fullness. Fullness can be experienced only when the believer nestles within God; otherwise, he or she must endure the emptiness of his or her own life when it is deprived of the divine spirit and has lost its own original goodness. Fullness, then, is spiritual wealth, and emptiness is spiritual poverty. In the second half of each stanza, the poet is filled with hope that the time has come for him to claim the expansive phase of this life rhythm; he longs to leave his contracted, empty state behind and move from suffering to joy.
Contraction and expansion is also a visible motif of the poem, due to the typographic arrangement of its lines.
