21 pages • 42 minutes read
Easter Wings
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Themes
The Fall and Its Consequences
While the poem is a celebration of the possibility and hope of redemption, it is also an expression of the “fallen” state of humankind. This should not be surprising, given Herbert’s Christian faith, and after all, only those who have fallen are in need of lifting up. As a result of the fall, sin entered the world and now taints every human being, making it hard for them to orient themselves toward God. The passages in “Easter Wings” in which Herbert describes his shrunken state when he (according to his own beliefs) has sinned and been punished for it, are typical of his verse. When this mood came upon him, he felt great anguish and suffering, and often appealed for God’s mercy. His poetry shows much self-criticism and spiritual struggle. He wrote no less than five poems titled “Affliction,” each of which presents his feelings when he is not in a right relationship with God or cut off from God completely. “Affliction (IV)” begins with a blunt confession of his own condition and an appeal to God: “Broken in pieces all asunder / Lord, hunt me not”; “Affliction (I)” tells of his sickness and grief in a little more detail than he offers in “Easter Wings”:
Consuming agues dwell in every ev’ry vein,
And tune my breath to grones.
Sorrow was all my soul; I scarce beleeved,
Till grief did tell me roundly, that I lived. (Lines 27-30)
Herbert sees no hope for himself unless God should intervene, because he cannot lift himself up by his own efforts. The fall was too devastating to the original nature of humans, which was in harmony with God. In “The Sinner,” Herbert writes of himself, “The spirit and good extract of my heart / Comes to about the many hundredth part” (Lines 10-11). In other words, only a tiny part of the poet’s heart remains good as far as its ability to understand and serve God is concerned; these are the “shreds of holinesse” (Line 6) that he is left with. It is this belief, about original sin and his own personal sin, that leads the poet in “Easter Wings” to describe himself as “Most poore” (Line 5) and “Most thinne” (Line 15). Without the redemption offered by Christ, there is no remedy for the shriveled, contracted emotional and spiritual state into which he has fallen.
The Fortunate Fall
The notion of felix culpa (a Latin phrase), or fortunate fall, is an important theme in the poem. The biblical story of the fall of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, which is invoked in the first two lines, was due to human foolishness and had catastrophic consequences. However, because of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ—none of which would have happened had it not been for the fall—the fall turns out to have been in fact a “happy” event, because God ensured that eventually, good came out of it. God’s plan, even for sinful humans, was one of redemption and the promise of eternal life for the Christian believer in heaven. This idea of the fortunate fall is conveyed in the final line of each stanza: “Then shall the fall further the flight in me” (Line 10) and “Affliction shall advance the flight in me” (Line 20). In a kind of spiritual paradox, the poet ends up in a much richer state than he would have been had the fall never happened. (A paradox is a statement that appears at first to be self-contradictory yet might on closer examination reveal a sound truth.)
The idea of the fortunate fall is considered a commonplace in the Christian understanding of the world. The phrase felix culpa is found in the Latin text that is translated into English as “O happy fault that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer.” It is sung during the Easter Vigil of the Roman Catholic Mass, as well as in other Christian denominations, including the Anglican Church. In English poetry, apart from Herbert, it is given memorable expression in Book XII of John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, first published in 1667, only a generation or so after Herbert’s poem. The speaker in the relevant passage is the first man, Adam, to whom the Archangel Michael has just revealed God’s plans for the future. Adam, who has not yet been expelled from the Garden of Eden, is greatly inspired by what he hears:
O goodness infinite, goodness immense!
That all this good of evil shall produce,
And evil turn to good; more wonderful
Than that which by creation first brought forth
Light out of darkness! Full of doubt I stand,
Whether I should repent me now of sin
By me done, and occasioned; or rejoice
Much more, that much more good thereof shall spring;
To God more glory, more good will to men
From God, and over wrath grace shall abound.
(Paradise Lost, Book XII, Lines 469-478. Milton: Poetical Works, edited by Douglas Bush, Oxford University Press, 1974, p. 455)
Redemption through Christ
“Easter Wings” exults in the triumph of the resurrection of Christ, which Christians celebrate every year at Easter. The poet fervently hopes to share in this resurrection; he pleads with God that his own life may be healed and uplifted as a result of what Christ accomplished. If he should be allowed to rise with Christ, to partake of the divine nature of the Lord, he will sing like a lark at dawn. A new and bright day will dawn for him, as for all humankind. Thus, in the second half of each of the two stanzas, the poet conveys a strong sense of the liberation of the soul—the time for melancholy and sorrow has passed and a new joyful reality is bursting forth. The pious and devoted Christian can ask for nothing more and be satisfied with nothing less, even though he or she knows that only God can decide exactly when this joyful breakthrough can occur for each individual.
As with the notion of the pervasive reality of sin, the reader of Herbert will not be surprised that Herbert is so ready to celebrate the resurrection. If Christ had only one death and resurrection, Herbert had many. In his poetry, he is always falling and rising; he experiences many little deaths, when he feels utterly distraught and hopeless, and many little resurrections, when new life floods into him and his spirit is miraculously restored. The poem titled “The Flower” provides an example of his up-and-down emotional and spiritual state. In the first part of the poem, he experiences a barrenness in which his heart is “shrivel’d” (Line 8); he also knows that God is so powerful be can bring a person “down to hell / And up to heaven in an houre”; (Lines 16-17). To the poet’s delight, he finds one day that life returns to him like a flower blooming in spring, and he expresses his amazement:
And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and the rain,
And relish versing: O my onely light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom thy tempests fell all night. (Lines 36-42)
To the poet comes a mini-resurrection. The fact that he knows what it feels like gives force to his utterance and his plea in “Easter Wings”: from being “Most poore” (Line 5) and “Most thinne” (Line 15), surely God, at this special time of year that celebrates the moment Christ stepped out of the tomb, will allow him also to taste the divine victory and the divine joy?
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