Altar (symbol and motif)
In the poem the altar symbolizes multiple things. The poet’s heart is described as a kind of altar in the poem. Like the altar, it is “broken” and made of fragments, but the speaker asks God to sanctify and make it whole. The poem itself is also an altar. This is reinforced by the shape of the poem, which appears on the page as a table with a base at the bottom. The double meaning of the altar-as-heart and altar-as-poem is confirmed in the final line, where “these stones” can refer both to the speaker’s broken heart and the words of the poem. With these multiple meanings at play, the altar is a central motif of the poem.
Internal/external (motif)
The poem plays with the altar both as an external object (the physical altar used in churches) and an internal object (the speaker’s heart inside his body). This dominant motif draws on longstanding religious debates about the relative importance of external acts or ceremony (works) versus internal states of being (grace). The poem does not fall on the side of external or internal, works or grace, but rather suggests that internal and external devotion can and should mirror each other.
