A set of wings was the device that Plato used to symbolize the soul of man getting to close to the forms. Plato aptly defines this concept in the Phaedrus:.
The wing is the corporeal element which is most akin to the divine, and which by nature tends to soar aloft and carry that which gravitates downwards into the upper region, which is the habitation of the gods. .
(Phaedrus, 246e) .
The truer a man is to the concept of the forms the further he can rise in their approximation. With the title Easter-Wings, Herbert is paying homage to the fusion that Augustine heralded in Confessions; the realization that Plato's description of the forms can reverentially translate into the Christian devotion to God. .
In Herbert's first stanza there is a strong Augustinian influence in his description of man's fall from grace. The stanza seems to be rather specific in aim; Herbert is explaining why sin, or evil, exists in mankind if God "createdst man in wealth and store". Herbert explicates that no inherent evil force exists, but that free will has allowed man to turn away from his inborn "wealth", instead "decaying more and more,/ Till he became/ Most poor:". A poetic reading of Herbert depends on enlarging the brief concept that he presents through allusion or association, to which Augustine's treatment of evil seems to be most appropriate. Augustine founded his understanding of evil, on the fact that "whatever is, is good; and evil, the origin of which I was trying to find, is not a substance, because if it were a substance, it would be good." (Confessions, Book VII: 12) As Herbert relates in his poem, Augustine believes that since God is creator he only can create the "good". Therefore evil is man's "decay" [Herbert's use of this word may be a reference to Augustine who said "even those things that decay are good" (Book VII: 12)], or as Augustine elucidates, evil is, "not a substance but perversion of will when it turns aside from you.
