The first of the collection's, this short poem physically represents both the place of offering and an offering in itself. This fifth edition in five years testifies to the popularity of Herbert's devotional poetry. The title page of the 1638 edition of George Herbert's The Temple: Sacred Poems, and Private Ejaculations. As a result, Herbert already has a degree of freedom in talking about the altar: despite its material existence the altar's metaphorical nature, for Protestants, creates ambiguity which leads to and allows Herbert's metaphorical treatment of this part of the church. As a Protestant, however, Herbert did not believe in transubstantiation (the process whereby the Eucharist wafer becomes the body of Christ) the Eucharist remains a symbolic ceremony and so the altar, by extension, also becomes symbolic rather than literal (as in Catholic doctrine).

The altar is where Jesus offers his own body to the faithful in the Eucharist and where the faithful offer Jesus their devotion. In this essay, written when she was in her second year of studying English at Cambridge, she guides the reader through some of the key poems in Herbert's collection, showing how the links between poetry and religious meditation raise important questions about metaphor and the privacy of reading.Īfter entering through, one of the first ports of call in Herbert's temple, or church, is the Altar: the place of sacrifice and offering. As Elizabeth Davis writes in this tour of George Herbert's temple, it is worlds away - but that's exactly what makes it such engrossing poetry. English devotional poetry of the seventeenth century might seem worlds away from the experiences of a twenty-first-century reader.

The Temple by George Herbert