ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

ARENAS OF RETREAT
(Amaz’d to see’t)
Found all was chang’d, and a new spring
Did all my senses greet;
The unthrift Sunne shot vitall gold
A thousand peeces,
And heaven its azure did unfold
Checqur’d with snowie fleeces,
The aire was all in spice
And every bush
A garland wore; Thus fed my Eyes
But all the Eare lay hush.
195
(ll. 33–48)
As these remarkably energetic stanzas suggest, we are at some distance from the
pastoral quietude of “To the River Isca.” 10 With its stunningly lush version of a
primitive church that resembles an episcopal cathedral, the passage reminds us
that Vaughan’s most brilliant verbal effects often have little to do with
refashioning courtly discourse and returning it to its heavenly owner. Although
there might elsewhere remain a Jonsonian dimension to his verse in his use of
the pentameter line or in the smoother octosyllabics of “The Retreate,” Vaughan
is at his most linguistically inventive when nature (or the speaker’s response to
a divine quickness in nature), not the court, is the object of mimesis. Fashion
disappears in favor of force, perhaps even allowing for the eruption of Welsh
sounds within the pattern of English verse. As in the memorable opening of
“The Water-fall,” the exuberant play with liquid sounds and the shifting,
cascading rhythms and abrupt enjambments present us with more than a visual
hieroglyph of a waterfall (a common enough practice among emblem poets in
Vaughan’s day). Vaughan has heard and recirculated the “deep murmurs,” as well
as the chiding “call” of water, its alluring force and vital energy:
With what deep murmurs through times silent stealth
Doth thy transparent, cool and watry wealth
Here flowing fall,
And chide, and call,
As if his liquid, loose Retinue staid
Lingring, and were of this steep place afraid,
The common pass
Where, clear as glass,
All must descend
Not to an end:
But quickned by this deep and rocky grave,
Rise to a longer course more bright and brave.
(“The Water-fall”)