Is there in truth no beauty?
-- Speaker (Line 2)

Importance: The poem begins with the urgent series of rhetorical questions that characterizes this poem and much of Herbert's work. The first of them is difficult to parse, but in this second line, Herbert asks the reader a simple and straightforward question. He asks whether truth requires adornment – if truth can be beautiful on its own, even without beautiful language to make it stand out. In doing so, Herbert prefigures a question that will be reflected in poetry for many centuries to come – the relationship between beauty and truth.

Is all good structure in a winding stair?
-- Speaker (Line 3)

Importance: This quotation addresses a more specific problem within poetry. It asks the reader to consider, not truth in poetry overall, but poetic structure. The metaphor of a spiral staircase, or a "winding stair", is used to emphasize the typically complex nature of poetic structure (3). Normally, the speaker implies...