Though Herbert never completely drops his theme of tracing out the contours of the physical temple, he quickly shows that his main interest is in exploring the temple within the heart and mind of the worshiper. While the tripartite structure of The Temple thus has a certain obvious coherence, there are limits to the usefulness of such a scheme. The final section, “The Church Militant,” turns from the life of the individual believer to the corporate body of the church, which, like each individual, must endure a series of successes and failures throughout its history. After such an initiation, the reader is ready to enter the section called “The Church,” a collection of lyrics that continues to describe various places or objects in the church (the altar, stained glass windows, and so on) but that in doing so dramatizes the spiritual conflicts of a believer trying to secure his faith.

“The Churchporch,” by far Herbert’s longest single poem, offers a great deal of advice on moral matters to prepare a youth who is otherwise not yet ready for more serious devotions. The Temple is divided into three parts, as though the reader is going to be led stepbystep through a physical temple. Understanding the design of The Temple as a whole is no easy matter, in part because Herbert’s natural inclination seems to be to “play” with structure, rather than to adopt a fixed schema as the pattern for the entire work.

As the title suggests, Herbert imagines himself to be a builder, and nearly all the details, both large and small, of the structure he raises show it to be a place of intricate beauty as well as sacred worship. Ultimately, however, poetic creativity and devotion are welded together in The Temple. Such poems as “Jordan” (I) and (II) and “The Posie” are in fact critical of certain styles of poetry and show that Herbert is more than occasionally impatient with the subterfuge, indirection, and even pride that seem inevitable in producing a wellwritten work. Everything known about Herbert suggests that he would not want to be described as a master craftsman or skilled technician of poetry unless it was also stressed that every effort of his artistry served a central purpose: helping him to know, love, and praise God, and to understand better his place in a world filled with sin but governed and redeemed by Christ. At the same time, though, the full range of Herbert’s intentions and impact may be missed if his technical virtuosity is seen as an end in itself. The Temple is unquestionably one of the most inventive and varied collections of poems published in the seventeenth century, and a reader can go a long way toward appreciating George Herbert (1593 – 1633) by studying this inventiveness and variety.

Easter wings poem