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This will sound like nit-picking, or as if I'm overly concerned with
categories rather than works. Vaughn's poem is very great, but it is a
religious allegory.
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To a degree, Fred, but I'd see it as more a tapestry poem, like the images
deployed by Chaucer in the Knight's Tale -- the smiler with the knife
beneath the cloak -- which I suspect Vaughan had in mind when he composed
"The World".
R.
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doctrine, which is the same at the end as at the beginning.
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I think this is something Vaughan picked up from Herbert -- knowing where a
poem will end, even before you start it. It's more of an artistic problem
than a doctrinal one. Donne was a good believing Anglican too, but he often
didn't know where his poems would end when he started them.
R.
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