Henry Vaughan | The Retreat | Close Reading

hello everyone welcome to close reading poetry this month I'm going through uh lectures on the Bible in literature and so I thought that this would be a good time to do a close reading of Henry Vaughn's beautiful poem The Retreat now this makes an appearance in part one of Bible backgrounds in English literature but it's also relevant for the second part of that lecture which deals with typology we'll see how vau uses Old Testament types to figure towards spiritual truths in this uh beautiful poem Henry vaugh was a Cavalier poet who actually was converted by reading George Herbert's the Temple and so George Herbert is a very important predecessor to vaugh V's own devotional poetry draws partly upon that mode that George Herbert introduced this intimate and confessional voice with imagery that's common to Nature and to the Liturgy but Henry vaugh does something different in many of his his devotional poems where George Herbert relies predominantly upon the Church of England its liturgies its festivals its sacraments and the Bible Henry vaugh goes a bit further and incorporates neoplatonic and hermetic philosophy and we'll see a little bit of that popping up in the retreat such a beautiful poem let's get into it the retreat by Henry vaugh happy those early days when I shined in my angel infancy uh this is a rhyming couplet although you may not know it because Modern English doesn't quite rhyme uh doesn't make that rhyme so it would have sounded like when I Angel infant say something like that so it would have rhymed but we're in rhyming couplets and we're in I Amic tetrameter an I am is a unit of metrical foot of an unstressed followed by stressed but you notice and there are four of those which make it tetrameter these are the syllables this is is unstressed stress but you notice that it begins not with Anan but with a Troy happy those early days when I and it settles into I Amic Rhythm this pattern of Troi followed by I am has a nice swing to it and he'll incorporate this pattern again in the second half or the second first paragraph of this poem so hang on to that but here it is it's it's meant not so much the swing here but it has the effect of Leaping happy those ...