These poems transcribed by Elizabeth Newell are wonderful examples of metaphysical poetry. Although T.S. Eliot believed, “not only is it extremely difficult to define metaphysical poetry, but difficult to decide what poets practice it and in which of their verses” (Eliot 1993), Bradford Smith makes an attempt at the definition. He states:
“Metaphysical Poetry is a paradoxical inquiry, imaginative and intellectual, which exhausts, by its use of antithesis and contradiction and unusual imagery, all the possibilities probing of love, death, or religion as the more important matters of experience in the life of the poet, and will be embodied in striking metaphorical utterance or in the use of the common (familiar) or the scientific word.”
By this definition, the poems written down by Newell can and should be considered metaphysical poetry. In order to prove this, I will be exploring the techniques of imagery, conceit, and rhyming couplets that is employed in the poem, Christmas Day VII, in comparison to other metaphysical poems.
Imagery is an extremely important technique used by metaphysical poets. In his article, What is Metaphysical Poetry?, Smith says “The small, every-day image, linked with a large idea, concern and realization and tortured wonder at the complexity of life and the universe are the true marks of the metaphysical poet” (Smith , 1934). Newell’s transcribed poem, Christmas day VII, bears this true mark of metaphysical poetry in its’ religious imagery. The opening line of the poem describes the sun as “the great lamp of Heaven.” The poem takes the every-day image of the sun and relates it to the lamp of heaven. This suggests the same sun that lights earth, also lights the heavens, and that heaven is among the stars. This line in the poem also leads one to wonder of the vastness of heaven. The imagery used in metaphysical poetry shortly leaves the reader in shock, but afterwards can be better understood. The poems transcribed by Newell incorporates this technique of imagery.
This similar style of imagery is used by John Donne when he takes the image of a flea and compares it to love in his poem, The Flea. The second stanza of the poem opens with, “Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,/Where we almost, nay more than married are./This flea is you and I” (The Flea, Lines 10-12). He takes the every-day image of the flea biting someone and relates it to the love between him and someone else. Like the poems copied by Newell, Donne uses a common image to lead the reader to thinking about a much larger concept or idea.
While incorporating the use of imagery, metaphysical poets employ the technique of conceit. In Lives of the Poets, Samuel Johnson describes conceit as “a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike” (Johnson). Again, the image of the sun as “the great lamp of Heaven” in Christmas Day VII is viable. Not many would relate a lamp, which is usually small and provides only an adequate amount of light, to the sun, which is massive and supplies light throughout the solar system. However, it can easily be related after thinking of the sun as the lamp of heaven. The poem goes on to describe Jesus as “The brighter sun of Righteousness,” that saves humanity from hell by “His beams of light and glory to disclose/To our dark lower world; and by those Rays/To chase the darkness, and to make it day” (Christmas Day VII, Lines 5-8). The theme of the poem, that Jesus has been born to bring to light the evils that surround man and then save him from those evils, are seen in this conceit. Providing the theme through conceits is a key mark of the metaphysical poet and the poems written down by Newell demonstrate it.
One particular metaphysical poet that employed the technique of conceit similarly to Newell is George Herbert. In his poem, Prayer (I), he compares prayer to 27 dissimilar images, ranging from “the church’s banquet” to “The milky way,” and finally ending on “something understood.” In this comparison of images to prayer, he implies that prayer is not one thing in particular but rather a plethora of different things. It can be good or bad, known or mysterious. This theme of what prayer is can easily be seen and understood through the conceits Herbert uses in his poem.
Another technique to convey the theme of the poem used by metaphysical poets is the form of rhyming couplets. Although not all metaphysical poems follow this form, and it is not exclusively used by them, it is a telling feature. The regular meter and the rhyme pattern provides two lines in which to make a point. This can make the poems easy to read, and can allow the poet to explore many facets of any given theme. Rather than the typical use as a satire or elegy, Newell utilizes it for devotional poetry. The last couplets of Christmas Day VI read “To life and glory; shew his father’s mind/Concerning them, how bountifull and kind/His thoughts were to them; what they might expect/From him in the observance or neglect/Of what he did require and then he fear’d/with his dear blow. the truth he had reveal’d” (Christmas Day VII, Lines 14-19). These stanzas are easily read in a songlike manner and cover the many different aspects of devotion to God. Once again, Newell demonstrates a trait of a metaphysical poet.
Similar to the poems transcribed by Newell, metaphysical poet, Andrew Marvell, makes use of the form of rhyming couplets in his poem, To His Coy Mistress. In this poem, he explores the different ways he would love his mistress if there were enough time in the world. The middle of the poem reads, “My vegetable love should grow/Vaster than empires and more slow;/An hundred years should go to praise/Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;/Two hundred years to adore each breast,/But thirty thousand to the rest” (To His Coy Mistress, Lines 11-16). Again, just like the poems copied by Newell, this poem uses the rhyming couplet form to convey the many options of the theme of the poem.
Thus, through the use of the techniques of imagery, conceit, and rhyming couplets, the poems transcribed by Newell are capable of being considered metaphysical poetry.
Bibliography-
Donne, John. “The Flea” Complete Poetry and Selected Prose;. New York: Modern Library, 1952. Print.
Eliot, T. S., and Ronald Schuchard. The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry: The Clark Lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1926, and the Turnbull Lectures at the Johns Hopkins University, 1933. 1st ed. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994.
Herbert, George, and J. J. M. Tobin. “Prayer (I)” The Complete English Poems. New York City: Penguin Classics, 1991. Print.
Johnson, Samuel. “Lives of the Poets” The Works of Samuel Johnson 21-23, (1779-1781). http://cowley.lib.virginia.edu/small/johnsoncowley.htm
Marvell, Andrew. “To His Coy Mistress.” The Complete Poems: Andrew Marvell. New York City: Penguin Classics, 2005. Print.
Smith, Bradford.” What is Metaphysical Poetry?” The Sewanee Review 42, no. 3 (1934): 261-272