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The Shadow of Eternity: Belief and Structure in Herbert, Vaughan, and Traherne

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The Shadow of Eternity: Belief and Structure in Herbert, Vaughan, and Traherne University of Kentucky UKnowledge Literature in English, British Isles English Language and Literature 1981 The Shadow of Eternity: Belief and Structure in Herbert, Vaughan, and Traherne Sharon C. Seelig Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Seelig, Sharon C., "The Shadow of Eternity: Belief and Structure in Herbert, Vaughan, and Traherne" (1981). Literature in English, British Isles. 66. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_british_isles/66 The Shadow of Eternity Belief and Structure in HERBERT, VAUGHAN AND TRAHERNE Sharon Cadman Seelig THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Seelig, Sharon Cadman. The shadow of eternity. Includes index. i. English poetry—Early modern, 1500-1700— History and criticism. 2. Herbert, George, 1593- 1633—Criticism and interpretation. 3. Vaughan, Henry, 1622-1695—Criticism and interpretation. 4. Traherne, Thomas, d. 1674—Criticism and inter- pretation. I. Title. PR545.M4S4 82i'.3'o9 80-51018 ISBN 0-8131-1444-6 AACR2 Copyright © 1981 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Club, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. Editorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40506 Contents Acknowledgments v Introduction 1 I. Between Two Worlds: HERBERT 7 II. The Shadow of Time: VAUGHAN 44 III. The Splendor of Eternity: TRAHERNE 103 IV. The Endless Sphere: TRAHERNE 143 Abbreviations 177 Notes 179 Index 191 Acknowledgmen ts MY THANKS to Mount Holyoke College for a leave of absence and grants-in-aid that first allowed me to undertake this study and that later assisted in its publication; to Richard Johnson, Philip Sheridan, and Sheldon Zitner who read and offered criticism of parts of the manuscript in several stages; to the late James M. Osborn for permission to read the manuscript of Traherne's "Select Meditations" in his collection; to J. A. Mazzeo and Edward Tayler, who guided and encouraged my earliest studies of Vaughan; to the Newberry Library, which provided both finan- cial and scholarly support for that first study; and most especially to my husband and family, who, all along, have understood. I gratefully ac- knowledge the permission of Oxford University Press to quote from The Works of George Herbert, ed. F. E. Hutchinson (1941); The Works of Henry Vaughan, ed. L. C. Martin (2d ed. 1957); and Thomas Traherne: Centuries, Poems, and Thanksgivings, ed. H. M. Margoliouth (2 vols. 1958). It's not a matter of peeling away the surface and finding the truth under- neath. The truth is on the surface; it's just a matter of finding it there. Gabriel Josipovici Time is a sacred thing: it flowes from Heaven, it is a thred spun from thence by the motion and circumvolution of the spheres. It is an emanation from that place, where eternity springs. The right use of it, is to reduce it to its Original: If we follow time close, it will bring us to its Fountain. It is a clue cast down from Heaven to guide us thither. It is the younger brother of eternity, the one must be sought in the other. It hath some assimilation to Divinity: it is partly knowable, and partly not: Wee move in it, and wee see it not: It is then most invisible; when most present. Henry Vaughan's translation of Nieremberg, Of Temperance and Patience Introduction IN the years following the rediscovery of metaphysical poetry in the twentieth century, it has become clear that the abundance of definitions and descriptions produced by that initial enthusiasm reflect at least as much the preoccupations of our own time as of that of John Donne. As Frank Kermode has argued, readers who earnestly seek an undissociated sensibility to satisfy their own needs and theories will surely find one, whether in the works of Donne or Milton or Dante.' But in our modern preference for wit and cynicism, we have often not fully understood how deeply serious and functional the wit of metaphysical poetry is.2 Even though we are perhaps more aware than some of our forebears that a jest may be serious, we are less easily convinced, despite the example of Beckett, that such wit may represent a world view as well. Of all that we have been told about metaphysical poetry I find Joan Bennett's words among the most useful: "It would not be wide of the mark to describe metaphysical poetry as poetry written by men for whom the light of day is God's shadow. "3 This modest statement has at least two advantages: it is not a definition and therefore does not propose to tell us what metaphysi- cal poetry is not; and it echoes the words of a writer of great metaphysical prose, Sir Thomas Browne, who also believed that" lux est umbra dei. "4 The metaphysical cast of mind, even the metaphysical conceit, is not found only among metaphysical poets. It is rather an attitude that is the product of centuries of biblical scholarship and religious meditation, originating in the method of exegesis that related the Old Testament to the New by types and antitypes, that saw in a single passage or event several kinds or levels of meaning, that saw in nature traces of the eternal, that found in the Book of Creatures a reflection of that other Book of God, the Bible. The germ of this philosophical attitude may be traced back to Plato, the methods of exegesis, to the second-century Alexandrian school 2 Introduction of Platonism of which Philo Judaeus is the most notable member.5 The expressions of this point of view are legion, but one might begin with Saint Bonaventure: All creatures of this sensible world lead the mind of the one contemplating and attaining wisdom to the eternal God: for they are shadows, echoes, and pictures, the traces, simulacra, and reflections of that First Principle most powerful, wisest, and best. They are signs divinely bestowed, which, I say, are exemplars or rather exemplifications set before our yet untrained minds, limited to sensible things, so that through the sensibles which they see they may be carried forward to the intelligibles which they do not see, as if by signs to the signified. The orderly method of the twelfth-century monk contrasts with the intui- tive flashes of the seventeenth-century mystic Jacob Bohme, but their perceptions have a common basis—the belief in a complex but essentially unified reality: "When I take up a stone or clod of earth and look upon it; then I see that which is above, and that which is below, yea the whole world therein." The seventeenth-century Spanish Jesuit Juan Eusebius Nieremberg recalled the origins of the tradition and stated its principle when he wrote: "Plotinus called the world the poetry of God. I add, that this poem is like a labyrinth, which is read in every direction, and gives intimation of, and points to, its author."6 This view of the world is not only the basis of medieval mysticism; it is the belief that informs metaphysical poetry. The contrast between the mystical, aesthetic image of Plotinus and the labyrinth full of detailed information of Nieremberg suggests the differences between those two thinkers, yet the elaboration of the meaning of the labyrinth undertaken in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance provides the network of associa- tions to be freely drawn on by the poets of the seventeenth century.7 The metaphysical poets were not perverse and egotistical exhibitionists who twisted reality to suit their own poetic whims. What appeared to Dr. Johnson "the most heterogeneous ideas. yoked by violence together" was for the previous century a form that allowed the discovery of the true nature of reality, a discovery accomplished through the witty insight of the poet. Perhaps the best statement of this notion is found in Conceit and the Art of Wit, a treatise by the Jesuit Balthasar Gracian, published in 1642, which defines wit as "an act of the intellect which expresses the correspondence that exists between objects. The conceit consists in a dexterous concord, a harmonious correlation between two or three ex- treme knowables, expressed by an act of the intellect."8 It is because such INTRODUCTION 3 correspondences exist in nature that the poet can express them in his art. "As God created a 'metaphysical' world, so the poet creates 'metaphysical' poems."9 The poet creates in the image of God, without whose primary creation his secondary creation could never be; yet the poet's creative act also illuminates the divine creation. When Donne in "Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westward" lays out the proposition on which the poem is based—"Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this, /The intelligence that moves, devotion is"—he appears to be stating only a tentative hypothesis, good for the duration of the poem. But the poem at last forces the reader to acknowledge the hypothesis as truth, by playing on the variety of relationships that exists between the physical and spiritual worlds. On the one hand there seems a contrast or
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