Question : Essay-type
Attempt a comparative study of ‘Regeneration’ and ‘The Retreat’.
Vaughan’s poems– ‘The Retreat’ and ‘Regeneration’ are religious poems. Both of them suggest the poet’s faith in God, and ardent faith in His graciousness and in man’s afterlife.
Both the poems, as has already been stated, suggest the poet’s faith in God. In ‘The Retreat’ he says that he came from Heaven, the abode of God, and in his infancy, he ‘could see a glimpse of His bright face‘. Similarly in ‘Regeneration’ the poet expresses his reverence for God in the last two lines when he says-
“Lord,” then said I, “on me one breath,
And let me die before my death!”
In both the poems, we find the poet’s longing to go back to Heaven. In ‘The Retreat’ he speaks of the ‘shady city of palm trees’. In ‘Regeneration’ he wants to go back to Heaven when he expresses his wish to die before his death. But there is a difference in the poet’s attitude that is clearly marked in these two poems. In ‘Regeneration’ he experiences a spiritual illumination and divine grace once in his life, and then he has no wish to stay on in this world. On the contrary, in the poem ‘The Retreat’, the poet knows that only after death he will be able to experience heavenly bliss.
The poem ‘The Retreat’ deals with a comparison between the poet’s childhood and manhood. When he speaks of his childhood, he says that his soul was then free from all earthly contaminations. But in ‘Regeneration’, he only speaks of the worldly bonds and his sense of his sinfulness. There is no reference to his glorious childhood days.
The poem ‘The Retreat’ begins with a note of melancholy when the poet contrasts his happy early days with his contaminated manhood. The poem ends again with a plaintive note with the poet’s awareness that he will not be able to go back to Heaven before his death. It is only through the gates of death that he is able to enter the land of bliss. On the contrary, the poem ‘Regeneration’ begins with a mood of despondency, but ends with a note of exhilaration. At the beginning the poet experiences dejection born of a sense of his own sinfulness. By the time the poem ends, the poet becomes conscious of the divine grace.
Both the poems are marked by metaphysical conceits. In the poem ‘The Retreat’, the conceit of the movement of his soul from Heaven is put into a fine analogy of ‘a mile, or two’—
“When yet I had not walked above
A mile or two from my first love,”
Again we have a characteristic metaphysical conceit when the poet speaks of his soul in this earthly life–
“But, ah! my soul with too much stay
Is drunk, and staggers in the way.”
But we should remember that the poem does not contain symbols which are profusely employed by the poet in ‘Regeneration’. The symbols are all metaphysical conceits. We come across these conceits very often as we go through the poem. The rocky path, the frost in the poet’s mind, the surly winds, the sin like clouds in his mind, a pair of scales at the top of the hill, two kinds of stones, two groups of men, the new spring in the ‘fair fresh field’ and lastly the wind reminding us of the Biblical wind are all symbolic.
We find that ‘The Retreat’ is a religious poem marked in its expression. ‘Regeneration’ is marked by the profuse thought. The poem may be written in a simple language, but the readers have to interpret the symbols at every step, and they find it rewarding.
