'Decaying' underlines that this is an all-encompassing type of poverty: everything good in this guy's life is actually rotting away.And just like 'wealth' (1) was more than money, here 'poor' means more than just no money. Facing a harsh world where-newsflash-you actually have to work to get a salary, Adam goes from poor to poorer, losing all the stuff that made life great.In lines 3-5 Herbert paints a grim picture of how everything went south. (For more details on what went down in the garden, check out our Learning Guide for Genesis). The backstory that Herbert doesn't mention includes Eve and the serpent, who convinced him to eat the fruit. 'Foolishly' Adam lost all his good stuff.

Herbert skips over the details of the Fall, but they're right under the surface in line 2 and throughout the rest of the poem. So is Adam like, Thank you, God, for giving me an abundance of everything I could ever want, I will of course honor your one request and NOT eat any forbidden fruit? Nope.Though foolishly he lost the same, Decaying more and more, Till he became Most poor: In other words, this is God doing the creating and don't you forget it. We know what you're thinking: What in tarnation is an 'st' doing at the end of 'created'? This archaic second-person verb ending signals respect.We've got the bookends 'L ord' and 'st ore' and in the middle 'cr eatedst' and 'w ealth.' Notice how the visual assonance (internal vowels that look the same but sound different) gives balance to the line.Head down to 'Form and Meter' where we sort it all out. The first line has 10 syllables (making it a line of iambic pentameter), but things get shorter from there. Did you notice that da dum sound that repeats? That means that this poem is written in iambic lines, but you'll notice that the syllable count is not fixed. Adam had all he needed: food, wildlife, a wife. Along with 'store,' it refers more generally to abundance. 'Wealth' here doesn't literally mean dollars in the bank.Since God probably didn't forget this, the speaker isn't so much reminding him of the good ole days as just thinking aloud. See, way back in Garden of Eden times, God created humans and gave them a pretty sweet life. Addressing God directly, Herbert begins at, well, the beginning. So to see the poem in it's original shape, check out our 'The Poem' section. Unfortunately, in breaking down the poem line by line, you lose a bit of the magic. Note, as we mention in our 'Why Should I Care?' section, the form and shape of this poem are super important to their meaning.Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,

Easter wings poem