George Herbert's "Prayer"

"Prayer" by George Herbert

Prayer the Church's banquet; Angels' age,
God's breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet, sounding heaven and earth;
Engine against the Almighty, sinner's tower,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six days' world-transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted Manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well dressed,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the souls blood,
The land of spices; something understood.

Now, I don’t fully understand all that either, but I think I “get it”.  Prayer, in our experience of it, can seem like everything from an “Engine against the Almighty”, in other words, a sort of battering ram of petitionary prayer – to that of “softness, peace, joy, love, and bliss”.  But, in all it's forms, prayer is the Church's banquet.  In it, we are nourished and sustained by our heavenly Father.