Easter Wings

The speaker is a Christian. The tone he adopts is a humble one; he does not remonstrate with God or try to make demands on him; he acknowledges that humans have brought their troubles upon themselves, but nonetheless he appeals for God’s support, through Christ, for a better kind of life.

The first five lines of the poem refer to the Christian doctrine of the Fall. The first line looks back to the creation of humans by God, as recounted in the biblical story of creation in the first three chapters of the book of Genesis. The poet, speaking directly to God, acknowledges in Line 1 that God created humans “in wealth and store,” that is, they were created in the image of God in the Garden of Eden (according to Genesis) and had everything they needed. In Genesis Chapter 1, God says to men and women that the earth is for their use; they are to “have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (verse 28, Revised Standard Version). They were also well provided with food (verse 30).

In Genesis, Chapter 2, God plants the Garden of Eden, in which the first humans, Adam and Eve, are to live. Among the trees in the Garden are the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God instructs Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If they do so, they will die. However, Eve is tempted by the serpent, who tells her that if they eat from that tree, their eyes will be opened and they will become like God, knowing good and evil. Thus tempted, Eve eats the forbidden fruit and gives some to Adam, who eats it too. Because Adam and Eve disobeyed his instruction, God punishes them by expelling them from the Garden, telling them their lives will now become much harder. They have lost the bliss they knew in Eden. In Christian thought, this is known as the Fall of Man.

It is what the poet refers to in Line 2: “though foolishly he lost the same.” (Following the custom of the period, the poet uses language that refers to the masculine—“man” and “he”—by which he intends to include all humankind.) Following the Genesis narrative, the poet puts the blame for the loss of “wealth and store”—the Fall—solely on the two originals of the human race, Adam and Eve. Lines 3-5 emphasize that as a result of the Fall, man’s situation became progressively worse, and the poet includes his own condition in that assessment.

The second half of the stanza reveals another side of the Christian story. After the Fall, God set in motion the sequence of events that would offer humans the hope and reality of redemption from their sinful state. God sent his son, Jesus Christ, into the world. Christ was divine but took on human form and was crucified by the Romans. The Christian belief is that Christ died on the cross so that human sin might be forgiven. It was part of God’s plan for the salvation and redemption of man. Also, Christ rose from the dead on the third day and ascended to heaven. Those who have faith in him will not only be granted succor in their lives, they will also be granted eternal life after death. Such is the traditional Christian view, which was fully embraced by Anglican priest George Herbert.

This belief fills the poet with hope, and he asks of God that he too may rise with Christ (Line 7). It is Eastertime, and he wants to sing, on this special day of celebration, of “thy victories” (Line 9), which refers to Christ’s victory over sin and death. The way he understands it, his “fallen” state, rather than continually weighing him down, will then prove to be an asset in his newfound flight to a more enlightened condition of the soul (Line 10).

Stanza 2 reflects the same pattern, although it is more personal than the first stanza. Instead of a general comment about the Fall of Man, the poet refers directly to his childhood and how he suffered. He likely has in mind what Christians refer to as “Original Sin,” that is, the sin of Adam and Eve, into which all humans are born. Because of the Fall, human nature became corrupt; it lost its original righteousness, and now all humans are inclined toward selfishness and sin, a turning away from God. Understood in this light, the poet interprets his suffering, sickness, and sense of shame as punishment by God for sin (Line 13). This might be Original Sin or sins he has himself committed, or a combination of both: He sins because he was born into original sin.

The second part of the stanza says essentially the same as the second half of the first stanza. The poet’s thoughts are now, appropriately enough for Easter, focused on the resurrection, and he issues another plea to join with the divine spirit of the resurrected Christ and so “feel thy victorie” (Line 18). In an image taken from the practice of falconry, he states in Line 19 that if he can graft his own decayed or defective wing onto the perfect wing of Christ, he will soar, despite his previously “fallen” state (Line 20). (The word “imp” in Line 19 refers to the practice of engrafting feathers in a damaged wing.)