Metaphysical Poetry : A Bird's Eye View

Sibaprasad Dutta
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‘About the beginning of the 17th century’, writes Dr. Johnson, ‘ there
appeared a race of poets that may be termed the metaphysical poets’.
Dr. Johnson seems to have borrowed the term ‘metaphysical’ from
Dryden who said that he ‘affects the metaphysics’. Johnson’s phrase
‘may be termed’ indicates that he used the term rather loosely, says
Helen Gardner.

Metaphysical poetry eludes all attempts at definition, and the critics

have restrained themselves by pointing out certain special features of
this class of poetry. The term ‘metaphysics’ means ‘ beyond matter’ (
meta means beyond and physics means matter). But
metaphysical poetry as a principle does not deal with spirituality; it is
so called because of its certain characteristics.

The metaphysical poets ‘ were men of learning, and to show their

learning was their whole endeavour’. They neither copied nature nor
life, neither painted the forms of matter nor represented the
operations of intellect. Their thoughts are often new but seldom
natural. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked together by
violence; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons
and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises’.
These startling comparisons between things more unlike than like are
called conceits. Another trait of metaphysical poetry is
concentration, and another one is argumentation. The metaphysical
poets write both on religious and secular themes, but their amatory
poems do not deal with Platonic love. While the love poems betray
deep emotion and passion, they are remarkably tinged with
sensuousness. Use of hyperboles alongside far-fetched images is
another feature of metaphysical poetry, and while lyrical grace is ever
present, they combine ‘levity with seriousness’.

Although Donne was the father of this class of poetry, the

metaphysical school included some other name like George Herbert,
Henry Vaughan, Richard Crashaw, Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew,
Abraham Cowley and Andrew Marvell. While all of them were directly
or indirectly influenced by Donne, they differ in many respects from
the pioneer and were not definitely talented as he was.

John Donne

The founder of this school of poets was John Donne who broke away
from the traditional easy, fluent style, stock imagery, and pastoral
conventions of the day. He aimed at reality of thought and vividness
of expressions, and his poetry is graceful, vigorous, and despite faults
in rhythm, often strangely harmonious.

In 1601 came out Of the Progres of the Soule, one of the satires
written in the couplet form that later imitated by Dryden and then by
Pope. The satires express Donne’s dissatisfaction with the world
around him and point to his cynical nature and keenly critical mind.
His love poems, the Songs and Sonets, were written in the same
period and are intense and subtle analyses of all the moods of a lover
expressed in vivid and startling language which is colloquial rather
than conventional. The poems of Donne, essentially a psychological
poet whose concern is feeling are all intensely personal and reveal a
powerful and complex being. Besides Songs and Sonets, other
well-known poems of this group are Aire and Angels, A
Nocturnal Upon S. Luce’s Day, A Valediction: Forbidding
Mourning and The Extasie.

Donne wrote religious poetry after 1610. Holy Sonets , nineteen in

number and the lyrics such as A Hymn to GOD THE FATHER
written after his wife’s death in 1617 are also too intense and personal
and reveal the struggle in his mind before he took orders in the
Anglican Church. They also reveal hi horror of death, his fear of the
wrath of God and his yearning for God’s love. Donne startles us by his
unusual and striking imagery and his conceits. He compares the
lovers to the two legs of a compass, his sick body to a map and his
physicians to cosmographers, to name a few.

George Herbert

George Herbert (1593-1633) is the name that follows next to Donne.

None of his poems were published during his life-time. The Temple
which was published in 1633 shows his zeal for the Church of England
and his concern with practical theology. He himself described the
work as ‘ a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed
betwixt God and my soul , before I could subject mine to the will of
Jesus, my Master ; in whose service I have now found perfect
freedom.’ The poems are peculiarly honest, intimate, sincere and
modest. They are homely, quiet and colloquial and touched with a
quaint humour. They are metaphysical in their use of unusual
conceits ( though Herbert does not cultivate the learned, scholastic
imagery of Donne) and in the blend of thought and feeling. Herbert
was a colourful artist, precise and simple in expression, fond of
unusual metrical patterns as in Easter Wings, and a lover of
harmony. His poetry is sensitive to the most delicate changes of
feeling. All his verses are the expression of piety as a man and as a
priest. His theory was that should dedicate all his gifts to God’s
service. “He is the saint of the metaphysical school,” writes Emile
Legouis.

Richard Crashaw

Richard Crashaw ( 1612-1649) was the son of a Puritan clergyman

but he did not remain within the Anglican fold and became a Catholic
when he was about 22 years old. He ended his life in Rome as
secretary to Cardinal Palotta. While still at the university, he was an
expert Latin poet. The first collection of his poems which was
published after his death was Delights of the Muses. There is in
this collection an imitative poem on the song of a nightingale,
Music’s Duel . His earliest poem Wishes to his Supposed
Mistress is rhythmically unique and enumerates the gifts which he
would like his beloved to possess. In 1646 he published Steps to the
Temple which was a collection of poems written before his
conversion. In this collection Sospetto d’ Herode and The Weeper
inspire admiration. While yet an Anglican, Crashaw conceived ardent
veneration for Saint Teresa, and he returned to her as a Catholic in
order to write his most magnificent hymn, The Flamimg Heart,
Upon the Book and Picture of the Seraphical Saint Teresa .
The flight of holy love which ends this poem is perhaps the most
ardent product of English religious poetry. Crashaw’s poems, all of
them, have several faults. Occasionally absurd, he scattered conceits
everywhere. While he was less intellectual that Herbert, and while his
language was less simple and precise, he was more warmth, colour
and harmony. “His lyric flights”, says Emile Legouis, “have been
equaled only by Shelley”.

Henry Vaughan

Henry Vaughan, the mystical Welsh doctor began writing secular

poetry which shows the influence of Ben Jonson upon him. But an
acute illness turned his thought to spiritual things. He imitated
George Herbert in Silex Scintillans which appeared in two parts
in 1650 and 1655. He is perhaps the only 17 th century poet who was
scorned in his early career but who was widely esteemed in his later
life. Of Vaughan’s poems, only a few have indubitable value, but
“these are pure gold”. His mysticism is more fluent and less
argumentative, and his imagination is mellower. He prayed not in a
church like Herbert but in the open air. His love for nature mingles
with Christian meditativeness and adds a romantic and modern value
to poetry. Vaughan had a hermit’s soul, He lacked the art to construct
even a few stanzas nor could he always conclude a poem. Although his
versification is far less skilful than Herbert, his meditations on lif and
death draw attention . His Retreat which is an exquisite poem
glorifies childhood and anticipates Wordsworth’s Immortality Ode.
Although Vaughan was looked down upon by his contemporaries, he
had a follower named Thomas Trahne who was born about 1634 and
emulated Vaughan’s glorification of childhood.

Thomas Carew

Thomas Carew ( 1594 – 1639 ) wrote Poems which was published in

1640. They demonstrated his lyrical ability, and although they betray
the influence of Donne and Jonson, they have a character of their
own. The fancy is warmly coloured though it is marred by license and
bad taste. His lines

“Ask me no more if east or west

The phoenix builds her spicy nest,
For unto you at she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.”

are marked by rich and beautiful fancy and golden felicity of diction
which is rarely equalled.
Abraham Cowley

Abraham Cowley (1618 – 1667), even more than Pope and Macaulay,
is the great example of the infant prodigy. When he was ten, he wrote
a long epical romance, Pyramus and Thisbe and two years later
composed an even longer poem, Constantia and Philetus. He not
only wrote poems but also plays and histories. The Davideis which
was published in 1656 is his best known poem, written in heroic
couplet. It is a rather dreary epic on King David. His other poetical
works include The Mistress (1647), a collection of love poems and
the Pindarique Odes which combine the classicism of the later
generation with Elizabethan romanticism. In Cowley, the
metaphysical strain is feeble. He was a learned man but his work
suffered from a lack of deep feeling and his use of wit and conceits
was artificial and lacked in artistry. Milton considers that Cowley was
one of the three great English poets, the other two being Shakespeare
and Spenser. But his renown dwindled with the passage of time.
Interestingly Dr. Johnson began his Lives of the English Poets
with Cowley whom considered him as heading the moderns. Cowley’s
other works include Miscellanies occasionally filled with verse. In
this work, we find On the Death of Mr. William Hervey, a Cambridge
friend and On the Death of Mr. Crashaw , which show him at his best
as a man. His Of Wit defines wit in classical manner and Against
Hope seeks to define hope. He also wrote verses on reason in which
he defines piety, and after the Restoration, he addressed an Ode to
the Royal Society which is an eloquent tribute to Bacon. Today, the
pleasant prose of his Essays is more read than his verses.
Andrew Marvell

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) was a Puritan songster. But he was not ,

however, a conventionally harsh and gloomy Puritan, the enemy of
worldly artistic amusement. His verses written in 30 th year glow with
human love and feeling for nature. On the whole religion has far less
place in Marvell’s verses than in those of other Puritans. Marvell
loads his own feeling in the longest of his poems Upon Appletone
House which shows his familiarity with the countryside and its trees
and birds. His feeling for animals, his suffering when they suffer is
voiced with infinite gracefulness in his semi-mythological poem, The
Nymph , complaining for the death of her fawn. He was the first to
see the glory of gardens and orchards. Marvell’s Garden
foreshadows Keats by its sensuousness and Wordsworth by its
optimistic and serene meditative mood. Still he prefers wild to
cultivated nature, and he protests against grafting, budding and
selection in the Winter’s Tale and in The Mowers Against
Garden. Sometimes Marvell turns to the pastoral but he gives it a
new emphasis of truth and even of realism. The short idyll Ametas
and Thestylis Making Hay-ropes is very original and graceful.
Love poems of Marvell are not many, but several like the graceful
Gallery and the slightly ironical Mowning, Daphnis and Chloe
hold us by their passion. The latter demonstrates woman’s tricks,
artifices and coquetry. His To His Coy Mistress is a marvellous
love poem which runs easily and harmoniously and bears the marks
of Donne’s strength and passion minus his obscurity and bad taste. It
is a masterpiece of metaphysical poetry based on the carpe diem
theory.

The strange, sensuous and passionate Marvell was also an ardent

patriot, and his patriotism is reflected in Horatian Ode Upon
Cromwell’s Return from Ireland , First Anniversary of the
Government Under His Highness, the Lord Protector and
Poem Upon the Death of His Late Highness, the Lord
Protector. Marvell paid too little regard to versification. His lyrical
works are written in almost entirely eight-syllable couplets, a
pleasant metre. He ought to have a more exacting standard of art, and
more whole-hearted devotion to poetry, greater mastery of words and
rhyme to rank among the greatest.
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