Retreat, The, is a poem written by the Welsh-born religious poet Henry Vaughan. Vaughan is loosely associated with a group of poets known as the Metaphysical poets, who wrote chiefly in the 1600’s. The Metaphysical poets used informal language, irregular rhythms, and witty metaphors known as conceits. Vaughan is also recognized as a highly individual poet whose imaginative vision was mystical rather than intellectual. “The Retreat,” in which Vaughan expresses his longing to return to the innocence of early childhood, was published in the 1650 collection titled Silex Scintillans (The Glittering Flint, enlarged in 1655).
Happy those early days! when I Shined in my angel-infancy; Before I understood this place Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy aught But a white, celestial thought; When yet I had not walked above A mile, or two, from my first love, And looking back at that short space Could see a glimpse of His bright face; When on some gilded cloud or flower My gazing soul would dwell an hour, And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity; Before I taught my tongue to wound My conscience with a sinful sound, Or had the black art to dispense A several sin to every sense; But felt through all this fleshly dress Bright shoots of everlastingness. O, how I long to travel back, And tread that ancient track! That I might once more reach that plain, Where first I left my glorious train; From whence th’ enlightened spirit sees That shady city of palm trees— But ah! my soul with too much stay Is drunk, and staggers in the way! Some men a forward motion love, But I by backward steps would move, And when this dust falls to the urn, In that state I came, return.
Vaughan follows the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, who believed in a more perfect preexistence of the human soul. Vaughan suggests that the individual has a memory of an eternal existence before life on earth (see Plato (Plato’s philosophy)). Therefore, childhood—the “angel infancy”—most closely represents an earlier heavenly state. The poet’s expressed desire to “retreat” and move “by backward steps” into childhood may seem like escape, but it is in fact a wish to re-create a silent state of solitude like that of an infant before it acquires language. This solitude most resembles an ideal state of religious contemplation.
Henry Vaughan was largely unappreciated in his own lifetime and for several generations afterward. Interest in his poetry, along with the poetry of the other Metaphysical poets, steadily increased during the 1900’s. Vaughan’s writings are now considered to use a style that anticipates the Romantic poets. Similarities can be seen especially with William Wordsworth, who famously wrote of the visionary child in “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” (see Wordsworth, William).
For more information on Vaughan, see Vaughan, Henry. See also English literature (Metaphysical and Cavalier poets) ; Metaphysical poets.
