Analysis Of The Retreat By Henry Vaughan English Literature Essay

Q: Analysis of Henry Vaughan’s ‘The Retreat’, Thomas Traherne’s ‘The Salutation’ and William Wordsworth’s ‘Ode: Intimations of immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’.

The reverberating theme pervading these three poems is the essence of childhood. Yet within this reminiscence lies the integral aspect of how childhood has an unequivocal affinity to angels, heaven and Providence. However, each poet explores their indisputable relationship with their childhood and God through contrasting approaches.

Vaughan, in his seventeenth century poem The Retreat, nostalgically longs to revert to his early childhood when he perceived himself as an angel of God, indigenous to heaven and unpolluted by sin that has now decayed his soul. As he says ‘when I shined in my angels infancy’ (Line 1-2) [1] he overtly declares he was born an ‘angel’, a child of God, thus unifying readers into identifying with him that they too were angels in their infancy. This analogy falls coherently as the reader begins to correlate a child’s purity to an angel’s innate inability to sin. They both merge into a harmonious entity which Vaughan encapsulates.

Vaughan’s diction evolves into a religiously specified semantic field with constant references to Biblical allusions. He pertains to the ideology of children residing in heaven: ‘From whence th’ enlightened spirit sees That shady city of palm trees’ (Lines 25-26). His lexical choice of ‘enlightened spirit’ infers that Vaughan has been “touched” by the light of God. He transcends the sinful human race in an elitist tone, whereby only the noble and ‘enlightened’ souls are permitted to enter the Garden of Eden. He further narrows the admittance into heaven by highlighting a spirit’s supernatural ability to ‘see’. A spirit’s heightened sight exceeds the physical limitations of human senses, therefore only the ‘enlightened spirit [is able to] see [and enter heaven].’

He paradoxically describes heaven as ‘shady city’ (Line 26). Antithesis is used to portray a distancing contrast between the ‘enlightened spirit’ and the ‘shady city’. The reader is ultimately forced to question the validity of heaven. How can God’s perfected and perpetually illuminated kingdom of heaven become shadowed? If mankind has the power to pollute heaven, this quotation periphrastically shatters one of the concrete foundations of Christianity- God’s omnipotence. Alternatively Vaughan incites the possibility of an angel fallen from God’s grace. The once, beautiful, angelic spirit of youth has now been grossly infected by adulthood’s sin; therefore the reader contemplates the notion of the ‘enlightened’ city depraved by Vaughan’s ‘shady’ spirit. A child’s innocence conceals a darker face of heaven: corruption and vice; echoing the Biblical anecdote of mankind’s notorious first sin- Adam and Eve’s disobedience to Providence and their exile from heaven. Vaughan, as a son of Adam, epitomises the fall of mankind as well as reiterating the interpretation of a fallen angel, thus, he is the cause for the defilement of heaven.

Conversely, Traherne’s The Salutation contradicts Vaughan’s perception of the fall of mankind and hyperbolically supremacises himself into a deity: ‘Into this Eden so divine and fair, So wide and bright, I come His son and heir.'(Lines 35-36) [2] Analogous to The Retreat, both poets Biblically allude to the Garden of Eden; however it is their portrayal of heaven that draws stark disparity. Whilst heaven in The Retreat is shunned as ‘shady’ (Line 26), The Salutation elevates heaven to being ‘divine and fair’ (Line 35). There is a clear paradox in the poets’ views on light, unveiling their attitudes and values of themselves and their own childhood. Vaughan is self-reproaching hence he condemns his heaven with shade, whilst Traherne is self-exalting therefore his heaven parallels the attributes of his lord: “divine [and] bright” (Lines 35-36).

Traherne then evasively proposes the idea that Providence has somehow breathed life into, conceitedly professing he is God’s son: ‘I come His son and heir’ (Line 36). As Traherne vehemently asserts he is God’s ‘heir’ he inevitably mutates Providence into a mortal being that the poet must succeed. This enigma presented provokes the reader to refute him as Christ was God’s true heir. It can be argued that Traherne attempts to emulate the preternatural powers of Christ and even God himself, in his pure yet finite childhood state. From a psychoanalytical perspective, Traherne’s emphatic persistence at identifying himself to be God’s son elucidates to his hallucinatory attempts at grandeur as a way of combating his feeble inferiority as a child. Although Traherne capitalises ‘His’ (Line 36) he instantly subsides God’s omnipotence by ironically humanising the creator of all human creations. This draws a similarity in Vaughan’s criticism of God’s omnipotence; however The Retreat argues that it is man’s ability to corrupt heaven, angels and spirits that disintegrates God’s power, whilst The Salutation reveals that man’s ability to transform God into a mortal entity obliterates his dominion.

In addition to this, the poems also vary structurally; Vaughan uses the poetic technique of enjambment (Lines 25-26) creating a continual pace in the poem, whereas Traherne uses a comma to stimulate a dramatic pause in his lines of poetry (Lines 35-36). Although both poems have irregular meters mirroring their vacillating conscious, both poets have rhymed these particular quotations accumulating a sense of rhythm within their poems, beautifying their angelic front.

In conclusion, Wordsworth’s ‘Ode: Intimation of Immortality’ he culminates the latter poems with the quotation ‘From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy!’ (Canto 5, Lines 65-66) [3] The salutation and The Retreat fail to reach a form of equipoise, one over indulges his stature, whilst the other is deficient and pessimistic, Wordsworth’s Ode juxtaposing these two poems ultimately resolves any discrepancies between them it binds a consistent theme whereby childhood flourishes in the bounty of Divine Providence.

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