The Altar

The Altar

A broken ALTAR, Lord thy servant rears,
Made of a heart, and cemented with teares:
Whose parts are as thy hand did frame;
No workmans tool hath touch'd the same
A HEART alone
Is such a stone,
As nothing but
Thy pow'r doth cut.
Wherefore each part
Of my hard heart
Meets in this frame,
To praise thy Name:
That if I chance to hold my peace,
These stones to praise thee may not cease.
O let thy blessed SACRIFICE be mine,
And sanctifie this ALTAR to be thine.

Within this poem George Herbert expressed his love and devout heart to God. And most interestingly, he combined the context, shape and content perfectly, and gave this poem vitality and integrality. Herbert was interested in shaped poetry, if we center text the Altar, we can notice that the shape of it was just like a true altar. Herbert gave the Altar architectonic charm, on the other hand, he also took advantage of this structure masterly, let this poem contained beauty in rhythm and rhyme scheme. We can divide the lines of this poem into longer lines and shorter lines, so the first and the backward four lines are longer lines and the rest will be shorter lines. In the first four lines, Herbert described how this altar looked like, and how it made briefly. In the following shorter lines, he used few words, maximum four words to construct a sonorous and sincere atmosphere. At the end, he used the last four longer lines to express his deeply love to God, and desire to sacrifice himself for God, and as the lines became longer again, the tone return to calm. Herbert combined the advantages of shape and rhythm, made this literature work impressing.

In first line of The Altar, “A broken ALTAR, Lord thy servant rears, Made of a heart, and cemented with teares”(line 1,2) Herbert compare his heart to an altar. This altar was “cemented with tears”, which shows that he felt sad at that period. However, why he used “cemented” in this sentence? In the following sentence of poem, we can find that Herbert want to show this altar was hard, and connected to an image, “stone”.

 he begged God to sanctify his heart, which was full of tears and sin, in order to let him keep pure and peaceful heart all of his life, and belong to God at the end. “A HEART alone
Is such a stone, As nothing but, Thy pow'r doth cut.”(lines 5,6,7,8) literally understanding these sentences, Herbert might state that his heart was just like a stone, no one could touch or influence his hard heart, but only God who had the very love had the power to smash this stone, and save him from lonely and despair. Moreover, “stone” can easily remind us to a story in bible. When Jesus and his disciples succeeded entering Jerusalem, disciples began to cheer and hail, but the Pharisees required them to stop and Jesus said, “If they stop, even the stone will be beginning to cheer.” Therefore, according to bible, “stone” is a kind of religious complex thing, it was pure and willing to express its praise to good characters. “That if I chance to hold my peace,
These stones to praise thee may not cease.”(lines 13,14) And when we read this sentence, we can related to this story, Herbert didn’t hesitate his praise to God, because if he hold his peace and silence, even the stone would feel ashamed for him, as stone can express its feelings devoutly. According to these analyzes, we can figure out that Herbert gave “stone” three meanings, the material to build an altar; his hard heart; a thing can praise to God devoutly.

...