how does Vaughan draws a contrast in his poem between his childhood days and later year
Answers
Explanation:
Glorification of the Childhood: We find the child as an ever idealized picture in The Retreat. As a defense of the poet we can say that the poem is a passionate lyric and no philosophical thesis and here is the account of the poet’s personal experiences and longing for the innocence and purity of childhood. The soul of in the human child which can perceive a faint heavenly glory in the natural beauty of the world, if stays too long in this world would forget their heavenly memory and the soul would be intoxicated into worldly affairs. Thus the child in his journey to innocence to experience corrupts himself. A grown up like poet wishes to retreat into the childhood innocence and it is possible when he would die and liberates his soul from the odds of worldly affairs:
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: