ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

ARENAS OF RETREAT
(Though single voices are but low,)
Could’st such a shrill and long cry rear
As speaks still in thy makers ear,
What thunders shall those men arraign
Who cannot count those they have slain,
Who bath not in a shallow flood,
But in a deep, wide sea of blood?
A sea, whose lowd waves cannot sleep,
But Deep still calleth upon deep:
Whose urgent sound like unto that
Of many waters, beateth
The everlasting doors above,
Where souls behinde the altar move,
And with one strong, incessant cry
Inquire How long? of the most high.
In Herbert, justice is a matter of balancing scales between sinner and maker, of
the speaker arriving at a measured understanding of the role of “merit” at the
great day. For Vaughan, it represents a supreme opportunity to speak out: not
merely to “complain,” but to register through the multiplying voices a sense of
sheer outrage over the accumulated acts of violence, irrespective of party politics,
and then to attempt to separate himself from the bloody events of Civil War:
O accept
Of his vow’d heart, whom thou hast kept
From bloody men! and grant, I may
That sworn memorial duly pay
To thy bright arm, which was my light
And leader through thick death and night.
It also represents a supreme test of patience. The passionate cry of “How long”
runs counter to (perhaps “into,” given the radical shift in argument at the poem’s
midpoint) the superior command of the “Almighty Judge!/At whose just laws
no just men grudge,” including the New Testament “law” of meekness and peace
centered in the Sacrifice:
May no cries
From the low earth to high Heaven rise,
But what (like his, whose blood peace brings)
Shall (when they rise) speak better things,
Then Abels doth!
The allusion to Hebrews 12:24, in which Jesus’s blood is said to speak “better
things than that of Abel,” has Vaughan speaking “better things” than Cook did
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