By January 1633, George Herbert knew the end was near. He had been suffering all the classic signs of tuberculosis—or consumption as they called it back then—for months. This is the same disease that would kill John Keats nearly 200 years later.

Shortly before he died in March, Herbert had a decision to make. He had written an entire volume of poetry and hadn't really done anything with it. Realizing that maybe, just maybe, somebody would want to read the poems he had painstakingly composed, Herbert arranged all of them into a nice little book and sent it to a man named Edmond Duncon, telling him to give it to a guy named Nicholas Ferrar. Herbert included the following instructions to Ferrar: "if he can think it may turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul, let it be made public; if not let him burn it; for I and it are less than the least of God's mercies" (source).

Ferrar didn't think twice, and Herbert's poems were published later in 1633 in a volume called The Temple. Now, Herbert was a priest when he died, a deeply religious man. In the same letter we just mentioned, he described his poems as a "picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt God and my soul." Clearly, Herbert saw poetry as a way to come to terms with one's religious faith, and he hoped that his poems might guide others in the same way he guided them as their parish priest from 1630-1633.

The Temple is today recognized as one of the most important volumes of poetry produced in the seventeenth century. The book is arranged in three parts. The first part is a long poem called "The Church-Porch," the second part is called "The Church" and contains many of Herbert's most famous poems (including "The Altar"), and the third part is another longer poem called "The Church Militant." As you've probably gathered, these sections were labeled to correspond roughly to different parts of a church (the entrance, the church itself, and the entire community of believers).

"The Altar" is the first poem in the "The Church." This makes sense when you consider that the altar (a special table used in religious ceremonies) is probably the first thing you would notice upon walking into a church. Just as the poem is the basis for all the poems that follow, so too are its lines a "picture" (literally and metaphorically) of the first stages of one's relationship to God. The poem is about building a metaphorical altar made out of one's heart, which is Herbert's way of saying the heart is where religious faith, sacrifice, and praise of God truly begin. It sounds simple, but the poem also makes it clear that building an "altar" is tough work (words like "tears" and "sacrifice" make that obvious), and a "spiritual conflict." (You can check out The Temple, along with a biography of Herbert, right here.) Centuries later, Ferrar's decision to save these poems from the dust pile is why we have "The Altar" to work on today.

Everybody's always talking about multimedia these days. Actually, they've been talking about it for the last fifteen years. Ever since it became really easy to make a PowerPoint presentation, people have been incorporating technology into, well, just about everything. It's not just that technology is cool. It's made life a lot more interesting for just about all of us.

Think about it like this: if you had gone to high school in, say, 1850, and you were studying British poetry of the seventeenth century, what do you think your classroom experience would have been like? Do you think the teacher would have shown you a short video clip on YouTube, then given a PowerPoint presentation with pictures, fun facts, and maybe a link to a cool animation like this one? Not a chance. You would have been stuck at your desk with a strict teacher who made you memorize tons and tons and tons of lines of poetry (not that that can't also be fun, right?). The bottom line is this: technology has made things a lot more exciting.

This brings us back to the seventeenth century and our new buddy George Herbert. George Herbert was a lot of things: a priest, a member of parliament, and one of the most important devotional poets of the period. You could also say he was an early advocate of multimedia, or rather one of the first people to explore all of its potential. What? How? Take a poem like "The Altar," or "Easter Wings." Both poems aren't just poems. They are shape poems, what are called "concrete poems." These are poems that are arranged to resemble the objects and themes they describe.

So, the poems utilize both the verbal (the words on the page) and the visual (the shapes). That's two mediums, which makes them examples of—wait for it—multimedia. Why does this matter? Well, for one, it makes Herbert a very distinct and memorable poet. Ten years from now somebody will mention Herbert, and you'll be like "Oh yeah, isn't he that dude who arranged some of his poems in little shapes?"

These shapes are also important because they ensure that the poems' major concerns are always etched in our minds. As we read through a poem like the "The Altar," we keep seeing the altar, literally. Herbert's poem definitely grapples with a complicated subject (building a metaphorical alter to God that is made out of one's heart), and the image is always there to make the poem's ideas a little more concrete.

At the end of the day, this is a poem about a table. That may not sound too incredible, we know. Think about it for a second, though. Generally, tables are used to hold and support things, but this table is special. When it comes to the kind of religious faith that Herbert's describing in this poem, the most important table is the one you offer to God—in the form of your heart. So pull up a chair and let's dig in.