Who were the 'Metaphysical Poets'? [Illustrated]

if I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me I know that is poetry if I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off I know that is poetry these are the only ways I know it is there any other way poetry as previously described is capable of a great many things often crowned the king of the Arts it can lift the spirits it can move one to tears it makes you know that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your

own to invoke the great Dylan Thomas but it is only able to do these things through its usage of language steam and rhythm which the poet utilizes to create glorious tapestries of image and feeling some would argue none do this to such great effect as those known as the metaphysical poet's so who were these poets while the answer to this is more complicated than one would think the phrase itself was first alluded to by the literary critic John Dryden in his criticism of his contemporary John Donne Dryden derisively comments he effects the metaphysics not only

in his satar's but in his amorous verses when nature only should reign to Dryden's presumed to chagrin John Donne was not alone in metaphysical content far from it for Samuel Beckett would later refer to a whole race of writers that may be termed to the metaphysical poet's finalizing the Canon for who counts as a metaphysical poet can sometimes be tricky but broadly we can say that the group comprised 17th century British poets amongst whom are commonly considered to be george herbert henry vaughan richard Kaushal William Cartwright and critically John Donne but how exactly do the

so called metaphysical poet's actually affect the metaphysics and beyond this water they actually all have in common in her preface to the penguin collection of such poetry Helen Gardner summarizes what came to be known by its denigrate errs as strong line style had its origins in a general desire at the close of Elizabeth's reign for nice expression what exactly does this refer to you may ask well for a bit of context in the 16th century prose writing was very much modeled after that of the Roman thinker Cicero however in the 17th century the literary zeitgeist

as it were was shifting and other Roman writers such as Tacitus and Seneca came to be preferred whose writings on the whole involved at less words but more matter the new fountain literary popularity in the 17th century ultimately influenced the metaphysical poet's and the way they wrote their poetry as a result the metaphysical poet's favored either very simple verse forms octo syllabic couplets or quatrains or else stanzas created for a particular poem in which length of line and rhyme scheme artfully enforced the sense that's all very well and good but what are these qualities actually

look and sounds like in verse well let's start with octo syllabic couplets these usually consists of two iambic tetrameter lines or sometimes trochaic tetrameter x' meaning that the rhyme falls in the last measure on the 8th feet a good example is found in a hymn to the name and honor of the admirable st. Teresa by the metaphysical poet known as Richard cross all love thou are absolute so Lord of life and death to prove the word will now appeal to none of all those dialed soldiers great at all you can observe here that there are

eight syllables on each line and the eighth feet of one rhymes with the eighth feet of two Lord is coupled with word not a perfect rhyme nowadays but it works and all is coupled with tool accordingly stanzas featuring these will have the rhyme scheme AABB this hopefully all goes towards proving the wisdom of Edgar Allen Poe who defined the poetry of words as the with merkel creation of beauty so octo syllabic couplets not as complex as they sounded right and is obviously just one example the traitors come into the works of pretty much all the

major metaphysical poets another form that's popular with the metaphysical poets is that of quatrains as Helen Gardiner identified quatrains are even simpler they're just stanzas of four lines usually with an a Bab rhyme scheme a perfect illustration which is found in Henry Vaughn's they're all gone into the world of light were in he laments the loss of his loved ones it glows and glitters in my cloudy breasts like stars upon some gloomy grove of those faint beams in which this hill is dressed after the sun's remove we can see that the stanza has four lines

and the a.b a.b rhyme scheme pairing breasts with dressed and growth with remove making it a quatrain it also features the characteristic word economy of metaphysical verse the language that is used is mostly short and Saxon as George Orwell would term it meaning their Anglo and not Latin at words which overall makes the stands are concise yet eloquent Helen Gardner also said that it is common for the length of line too awfully in force the sense and we can see that here so the third line is in pentameter for example so as the Sun withdraws

and we are left with these faint beams we wish to make the light last so the line is protracted and long whereas the preceding line is in iambic trimeter in comparison almost feeling as if ended halfway through an omen for when the Sun is fully gone and we are abruptly left in darkness in short this stanza and the perm as a whole I should say is an excellent stylistic sample of a metaphysical poem but this is just the mode of a poem in a way what about the thematics well let us take the same stanza

from form and examine the content here the narrator compares his memories of loved ones to stars lighting up a dark forest or a gloomy grove similarly the first line likens the memories to light glittering through clouds the image we conjure in turn is that of the Sun now that's pretty important as in poetry the Sun has often spoken of something heavenly in celestial even in the Bible to find such metaphors as Christ will shine on you Vaughn is saying that his memories of his loved ones are more than memories they are indelible marks left on

him almost as if by divine impression his departed are still there but not in a physical sense in this regard he affects the metaphysics in verse again this is common to all the metaphysical poet's a similar example can be found in Georg Herbert's the son how neatly do we give one only name to Paris issue and the sun's bright stare here pottery is used to cohere Jesus as the Son of God with Jesus being like the solar son wherefrom he serves as the source of light or goodness to shine through to us pottery back in

the 17th and 18th century was not only in service of innuendo but also work to unite two concepts under a single word Herbert no doubt saw it as an attractive attribute of the English language that Sun and Sun opted phonetically identical this poem was written to elaborate upon this connection an important trait of the metaphysical poet's is that their verses are often written to persuade sometimes the reader sometimes the object of the poem a very good case is the flee by John Donne in which he attempts to coerce a woman to sleep with him he

gives her the example of a flea which after taking his blood lands on her and does the same mingling the two in doing so yet this enjoys before tuo and pampered swells with one blood made of two and this alas is more than we would do if the two of them were to have sex he argues their bloods wouldn't even mingle so in a way intercourse is actually less invasive than having a flea land on you so she shouldn't be so reserved about it an interesting line of reasoning sure but one that nicely embodies the

persuasive trait of the metaphysical poet's another characteristic essential to these poets is a fondness for conceits a comparison whose ingenuity is more striking than its justice or at least is more immediately striking so contrary to poets like Edmund Spenser whose which metaphors invites you to relish in the perfect likeness of the things being compared the metaphysical poet's instead employ these conceits where the impressiveness comes not from how apt the comparisons are but rather how resourceful the poet has been in drawing them we can see this in one of William Cartwright sperms where he speaks of

his impetus to reform in the New Year motion as in a mill is busy standing still the comparison is quite witty but only if we forget the fact that Mills actually do a lot of other stuff they're far from the idle mechanisms of Sisyphean labor that Cartwright aims did a picture the mass as gardener says like a spark made from striking two stones together after the flash the stones are just two stones and this is what makes it a conceit finally let's briefly look at what I consider to be the most quintessential stands of any

of the metaphysical poems it comes from John Donne no surprise the de-facto farther off the movement and is found in his excellent poem a valediction forbidding morning written as a farewell to his wife in 1611 as he departed on a visit to France with Sir Robert Drury the poem details the narrator's assurances not to worry or feel sad in his absence as their love is greater than any other one stanza goes as such dull sublunary lovers love whose solace sense cannot admit absence because it does remove those things which elementadd it straight away we can

see the form of quatrains to tetrameter couplets of course as standard with the rhyme scheme a bee a bee but what exactly is he going on about when he mentions some loon we love well it's actually a reference to Aristotelian physics which posits that the geocentric things below the moon or sublunary of physical entities constituted by the elements whereas the cosmos above the moon or super lunar II a metaphysical under of the aether so done here is saying that others only love their partners in simple physical ways for his love with his wife has something

else metaphysical which transcends mid-distance and geography his expert use of language perfectly complements this notion the heavy El sounds and the first line encapsulates your duns derision at sublunar 'i loved meanwhile the syllabus of the s is here mirror that of the elsewhere saw those things which elementadd it is upon naturally speaking both of the senses being grounded and elementadd in the physical and of sublunary love being of the elements for sublunary lovers absence or distance Persis strain on their connection for it removes the physical however for done and his super lunar II love it

has no effect this is a textbook metaphysical poem and gives a broad sense as to what these 17th century poets were about in general their seamless marriage of simple verse structure conceit and honoree alongside arguments and themes drawing from the metaphysical demonstrates their remarkable skill as poets and should explain their profound influence on poetry and literature as a whole a poet says WH Auden is before anything else a person who is passionately in love with the language and I'm afraid that is the end of the video thank you so much for watching if you liked

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