Critical appreciation of the poem, "The Retreat".

Henry Vaughan's 'The Retreat' is a metaphysical devotional poem where the poet expresses the glory of childhood and his earnest desire to step backward to his childhood. The poet wants to look forward to the heavenly bliss and peace which he knows very well that only childhood can confer upon him. So he wants to go backstep to his pollution free childhood where there was no material pleasures and entertainments which can provoke him to do any further wrong.

        The poet with broken heart yearns for that divine glorious state of childhood as he becomes very tired of his present profitable life. He feels horrible among this gross pleasures.

          He says in this poem that in that time of "angel infancy" no sinful thought could stand in the way to his divine communion with God. But his present life of material pleasure makes a distance with his "first love" i.e. God.

         When he realises that there is a huge distance with his love, he wants eagerly to go back to heaven from where he came from. He wants to bid good bye to the earthly pleasure and his eagerness is clearly visible in the last four lines of the poem:
 "Some men a forward motion love;
   But I backward steps would move,
   And when this dust falls to the urn,
   In the state I came, return."

         The word "retreat" means 's a period of time when somebody stops his usual activities and goes to a quite place for prayer and thought'. The poet Vaughan appropriately uses the word to express his point of view. Here he wants that kind of retreat where he can again see the "glorious train" of angels in the "shady city of palm trees". After a long painfpainful journey he wants to go back to the original home i.e. Heaven.

       The same tone is also found in Wordsworth as he writes,
 "From God, who is our home:
  Heaven lies about us in our infancy."
In Jonne Donne's "Batter My Heart", we also see that he also wants to purify his soul by the battering of God because his soul becomes sinful and polluted.