Question

how does Vaughan draws a contrast in his poem between his childhood days and later years​

Answer 1

Answer:

The poems by which Vaughan is remembered are contained in Silex Scintillans, which appeared in two parts in 1650 and 1655 respectively. This is largely religious inspiration and its title is significant for the emblem on the title page that reveals its meaning to be a heart of flint burning and bleeding under the stroke of a thunder bolt and so throwing off sparks. It is of course the light of divinity.

Vaughan is at his best when he deals with the themes of childhood and of communion with nature and with eternity. The poem in discussion The Retreat influenced Wordsworth in the composition of The Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early childhood. Vaughan’s Retreat is a religious lyric, a spiritual optimism. It is also a characteristic poem of the metaphysical school. Vanghan’s expression and imagery bear the marks of the metaphysical religious poem of Donne and Herbert.

Heaven

A deep religious poem: Vaughan’s first love in his poem The Retreat is God. When he was still a child and had hardly made any progress into worldly existence, he could have a glimpse of God’s bright face whenever he looked back. But as the burden of worldly existence grew upon him, he lost the glimpse of the divine visage. Indeed, adulthood taken away that divine vision of childhood. This is the loss, the poet laments. In this critical situation Vaughan pleads to move backward because forward because forward movement in time leads to sin. The backward movement leads to innocence: