In these fourteen lines, prayer is never pinned down by a single statement. Instead, Herbert offers a torrent of metaphors, one after another without a main verb. The images swing wildly between cosmic power — an engine against the Almighty, reversed thunder — and fragile, homely beauty: a well-dressed man, the Milky Way, a bird of paradise. The speaker’s voice carries awe, but also a gentle intimacy, as if naming something deeply familiar. The poem moves from shock to softness, peace, joy, and bliss, gathering speed and then hushing into the simplest image of all: “something understood.” That phrase doesn’t explain the earlier richness so much as absorb it. Prayer, for all its mystery, becomes a quiet moment of recognition. Reading it feels like walking through a cabinet of wonders and then stepping into ordinary daylight, changed.
Prayer — Summary
Prayer the Churches banquet, Angels age, Gods breath in man returning to his birth, The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgramage, The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth; Engine against th'Almightie, sinners towre, Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear, The six-daies world-transposing in an houre, A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear; Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse, Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best, Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest, The milkie way, the bird of Paradise, Church-bels beyond the starres heard, the souls bloud, The land of spices; something understood.