Western notation had been trying to create this compression for a long time. It fulfills a traditional genre called “shape poetry.” Shape poems, or pattern poems, are poems whose shape refers to their subject: a poem about an altar in the shape of an altar, a poem about an ax in the shape of one, a poem about an umbrella which outlines a raised umbrella. It is an old genre.The following poem is shaped as an altar:
The Altar
A broken ALTAR, Lord thy servant rears,
Made of a heart, and cemented with teares:
Whose parts are as thy hand did frame;
No workmans tool hath touch'd the same
A HEART alone
Is such a stone,
As nothing but
Thy pow'r doth cut.
Wherefore each part
Of my hard heart
Meets in this frame,
To praise thy Name:
That if I chance to hold my peace,
These stones to praise thee may not cease.
O let thy blessed SACRIFICE be mine,
And sanctifie this ALTAR to be thine.