Miles
Levy-Nordhoff
Wexler
Engl 495ESM
23 September
2013
Vaughan
and Wordsworth on Innocence and Experience
Because
so many authors have similar styles and discuss similar issues, it is easy to
come to a hasty conclusion that the authors were inspired by one another or
talking back to the other; however, it is an amazing phenomenon when two
authors are so similar that certain lines seem to be mimicking each other. Writing
150 years before William Wordsworth, the well-known ‘poet of nature’ who “defined”
poetry in his “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads,” the lesser-known Henry Vaughan
discussed similar themes of divinity, nature, innocence, and experience. Even
to an inexperienced litterateur, Wordworth’s “Ode” and Vaughan’s “The Retreat”
are undeniably similar in theme and style. It is known that Wordsworth had copies of
several of Vaughan’s works, proving Wordsworth was inspired by him. Although he
got many of his ideas from Vaughan, Wordsworth’s opinions of innocence and
experience differ slightly from Vaughan’s. While Wordsworth found value in
experience, Vaughan favors innocence in his poem, “The Retreat.”
Like Wordsworth, Vaughan values
innocence because it is divine and gives the ability to be closer to God.
Vaughan’s poem “The Retreat” begins, “Happy those early days! when I/ Shined in
my angel-infancy”(1-2). Vaughan compares the innocence of childhood to being an
angel in heaven. The poem’s narrator (assumed to be Vaughan, himself) explains
that his life on Earth is not his main purpose, “Before I understood this place/
Appointed for my second race,/ Or taught my soul to fancy ought/ But a white,
celestial thought” (3-6). Vaughan explains that an innocent (angelic) mind only
thinks about and desires God. Experience teaches one’s soul to desire ungodly
things. Wordsworth’s opening lines to his “Ode” seem to be a verbal echo of
these lines by Vaughan, “There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,/ The
earth, and every common sight,/ To me did seem/ Apparelled in celestial light”
(1-4). Vaughan continues in his poem describing the loss of innocence like
walking away from God and looking back, seeing “a glimpse of his bright face”
(10). Both Wordsworth and Vaughan found tranquility and divinity in nature, but
in slightly different ways. Wordsworth, being a poet of nature, found true divinity and spirituality in nature.
Nature brought one back to times of divine innocence. In his critical essay “The
Source of Henry Vaughan’s Ideas Concerning God in Nature” A. C. Judson writes, “since
all nature possesses something of the Eternal spirit, the child, blessed with
the keenest memory of his celestial home, can most easily perceive it” (602). To
Vaughan, this is true, but it is only a shadow. “When on some gilded cloud or flower/ My gazing soul would dwell an hour,/ And in those weaker
glories spy/ Some shadows of eternity” (11-14). While Vaughan does find
divinity in nature, it is a “weaker glory.” Nature is just a mimetic
representation of the divine. Nature may seem eternal (it certain does to
Wordsworth), but, sounding like Plato, Vaughan believes anything physical is
temporary: mere “shadows of eternity.” He furthers this philosophy in the
lines, “But felt through all this fleshy dress/ Bright shoots of everlastingness” (19-20). Coleridge (a close confidant to
Wordsworth) seems to mimic these lines in his poem “Sonnet XVII”: “some have
said/ We lived ere yet this fleshy robe we wore” (5-6). These poets believe mortal
life is merely temporary and our skin and bodies are only for show.
While both Wordsworth and Vaughan
value innocence, Vaughan separates from Wordsworth’s ideology and views
experience as highly negative. If innocence is divinity and the ability to be
closer to God, then the opposite of that would be, trivially, ungodliness and
sinfulness. Vaughan describes innocence as the time “Before I taught my tongue
to wound/ My conscience with a sinful sound” (15-16). In these lines, Vaughan
is talking or arguing with his conscience (something supposed to determine
right from wrong), an effect of experience. The word choice of “taught” implies
willingness and even a choice to sin, thus proving experience is not to be
sought. Vaughan believes that the end goal, after this temporary, mortal “fleshy
dress,” is to return to innocence, in heaven with God: “Some men a forward
motion love,/ But I by backward steps would move” (29-30). The forward motion
he describes is a movement toward experience; backward steps is the movement
back to innocence and divinity. Vaughan, continues “And when this dust falls to
the urn/ In that state I came, return” (31-32). Again hinting that his mortal
body is temporary, he explains that he wants to return to innocence, where he
came. This could also symbolize a physical return to dust, for before he was mortal,
what was he? In her critical essay “Vaughan and Wordsworth” Helen N. McMaster
compares and contrasts Vaughan and Wordsworth’s texts and writes, “In Wordsworth’s
“Ode” there is no such confidence in the idea of a return [to innocence]; life
to him was not a great circular journey from a home which will be safely
reattained [sic] through the mercy of Christ, but a progressive evolution from
one state to another during which the spirit is encouraged to believe in its
immortality by recollections of childhood when common sights were ‘apparelled
in celestial light’” (322). Although Wordsworth was highly influenced by
Vaughan’s ideas and beliefs, their opinions on innocence and experience
differed. The differences between the two poets are at the same points where
likenesses can be found.
Works Cited
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. "Sonnet XVII. Composed on a Journey
Homeward; The Author
Having Received Intelligence of the Birth of a
Son."Poem Hunter. Poem Hunter, n.d.
Web. 20 Sept. 2013.
Judson, A. C. "The Source of Henry Vaughan's Ideas Concerning
God in Nature." Studies in
Philology 24.4 (1927): 592-606. JSTOR.
Web. 20 Sept. 2013.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/4171987>.
McMaster, Helen N. "Vaughan and Wordsworth." Review
of English Studies 11.43 (1935): 313-
25. JSTOR. Web. 20 Sept. 2013.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/508084>.
Vaughan, Henry. "The Retreat." 100 Best-Loved
Poems. By Philip Smith. New York: Dover
Publications, 1995. 18-19. Print.
Wordsworth, William. "Ode Intimations of Immortality from
Recollections of Early
Childhood." The Oxford Book of
English Verse. Bartleby, n.d. Web. 20 Sept. 2013.
