The Retreat



Henry Vaughan (17 April 1621 - 23 April 1695). Vaughan was a Welsh metaphysical poet. He was also an author, translator, and physician who wrote in English. Disheartened and depressed Vaughan entered a spiritual crisis. The read  Herbert’s poetry and this had a great impact on him. We may call it a conversion experience, a radical spiritual change. 

       He became a mystical poet. Influenced by his Welsh background Vaughan he wrote much about nature. He borrowed his imagery from nature. We find less of conceits, unlike the other metaphysical poets. There is much more nature symbolism. He writes about the real countryside he would have seen every day. The poem ‘The Retreat’ is a thirty-two lines poem.

        There is only one stanza in the poem. The poet has used the rhyme scheme of (aa bb cc dd).


The title ‘Retreat’ refers to two meanings 

  1. Hiding from one place.

  2. The other is a reference to a place of happiness.

Henry Vaughan in this poem describes the speaker’s desire to escape to the speaker Mourns the lost days of his youth. 

He longs to return to his “angle in Fanney” 

In the present day, he worries about his own emotions and the sinful nature of them. At the end of the poem, the poet describes the end of his life and how he will return to the dust of the earth. 

             The speaker remembers what it was like when he “shined in his angel infancy”. These seem to be the clearest, purest part of his life. Now he tries to understand this place. The poet knows the world that he is living in. it is dark in all corners. Earlier he lived so purely and never thought about how “celestial”  it was. Now he could not think clearly. Further, the poet describes what his life was before he left his home. This was his first ‘love’. He did not know the world nor its dangers, before entering it. Now he realizes that the glimpses he saw of “god”.

Earlier he spent hours looking at the beauty of the natural world. The speaker Mourns for what he will never have again. It seems he had become “drunk” with his own longings. Yet he knows nothing can be changed. The speaker speaks of his own death. It will be the ultimate returning as he will take the form of “dust”. His body will return to earth and become again what it was before he was born