Metaphysical poets, selected poems Contents
Themes in Regeneration
Regeneration begins as if it is going to be about personal freedom and the Images of enclosure and escape in the first stanza reinforce this. However, as the ‘escape' continues, the inner state becomes increasingly significant. Eventually, the freedom under discussion becomes the freedom of the Holy Spirit to blow where it chooses. The poet can only ask that he may be touched and changed.
Search for truth
So the poem becomes much more The search for truth. Where scenery becomes sign, then the spiritual landscape becomes the meaning of the poem. Vaughan very cleverly allows an apparent outer landscape to become an image of the inner one.
Investigating Regeneration
- Look again at the section on the theme of Regeneration
- Do you see any other important theme?
- Why do you think Vaughan offers hints rather than exact explanations?
1. Imitation, copy, likeness, statue, picture in literature, art or imagination.
2. A figure of speech in which a person or object or happening is described in terms of some other person, object or action (i.e. as a metaphor or simile)
The technical name for a verse, or a regular repeating unit of so many lines in a poem. Poetry can be stanzaic or non-stanzaic.
The third person of the Trinity (God in three persons). Came upon the disciples at Pentecost after Jesus had ascended in to heaven.
1. Consisting of or relating to (the) spirit(s), rather than material or bodily form.
2. Relating to matters of the soul, faith, religion, or the supernatural.
3. A type of religious song whose roots are in the slave communities of North America.
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