dots-menu
×

Home  »  The English Poets  »  The Retreat

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. II. The Seventeenth Century: Ben Jonson to Dryden

Henry Vaughan (1621–1695)

The Retreat

HAPPY those early days, when I

Shin’d in my angel-infancy!

Before I understood this place

Appointed for my second race,

Or taught my soul to fancy ought

But a white, celestial thought;

When yet I had not walk’d above

A mile or two, from my first love,

And looking back—at that short space—

Could see a glimpse of His bright face;

When on some gilded cloud or flower

My gazing soul would dwell an hour,

And in those weaker glories spy

Some shadows of eternity;

Before I taught my tongue to wound

My conscience with a sinful sound,

Or had the black art to dispense,

A sev’ral sin to ev’ry sense,

But felt through all this fleshly dress

Bright shoots of everlastingness.

O how I long to travel back,

And tread again that ancient track!

That I might once more reach that plain,

Where first I left my glorious train;

From whence th’ enlightened spirit sees

That shady city of palm trees.

But ah! my soul with too much stay

Is drunk, and staggers in the way!

Some men a forward motion love,

But I by backward steps will move;

And when this dust falls to the urn,

In that state I came, return.