Stephen Hawes was the first English author to take this up in his intricate “A pair of wings” in about 1500. These poems and their like were later imitated in Renaissance Neo-Latin verse and the fashion then spread to vernacular literatures as well. The poem is in the form of an allusive riddle whose subject is Eros, the god of love, but where the only hint of his wings is contained in the adjective referring to him, “swift-flying”. Among these was one in the shape of wings by Simmias of Rhodes. The Renaissance revival of interest in ancient Greek poetry brought to light a few poems preserved in the Greek anthology in which the shape of the lay-out mimics the poem's sense. It was originally formatted sideways on facing pages and is in the tradition of shaped poems that goes back to ancient Greek sources. "Easter Wings" in the 1633 edition of The TempleĮaster Wings is a poem by George Herbert which was published in his posthumous collection, The Temple (1633).
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