Explore the theme of childhood in 'The Retreat' by Henry Vaughan

The Retreat focuses largely on the glorification of childhood as a time of being innocent and close to God, prior to the ‘sinful’ (line 16) pollution of the human soul on Earth. The poem’s opening couplet, ‘Happy those early days! when I / Shined in my angel infancy’ (lines 1, 2) initially presents a sense of fond reminiscence of childhood. Vaughan’s caesural use of exclamation mark in the opening line creates a short and simple exclamation which seems to reflect the tranquil and untroubled nature of the heavenly youth the poem depicts, as does his use of enjambment in creating a sense of unrestricted and untroubled flow. As the poem progresses, however, this exclamation seems to take on a darker meaning, suggesting instead a painful yearning for a time ‘Before I taught my tongue to wound / My conscience with a sinful sound,’ (lines 15, 16). Here, Vaughan seems to suggest that the immorality of life on Earth has induced self-destructive ‘sinful’ behaviours in him, with the use of personal pronouns ‘I’ and ‘my’ creating an introspective tone which suggests the evils of human existence are not entirely external, even to somebody so seemingly pious and devoted to God as Vaughan’s speaker. In this sense, Vaughan exalts childhood as a time closer to a pure, divine existence, where adulthood, conversely,  is presented to be so polluted by sin as to actually become painful, or ‘wound[ing]’ (line 15).