Evolution of the Topographical Poem: Jonson, Wordsworth and Whitman

The topographical poem is a genre in which the poet details the terrain of a particular landscape for the reader. It is not the verbal equivalent of a wide lens photograph, however. The topographical poem is, foremost, an artistic endeavor: conjured from the creative intuitions of the author and molded by the influences of its time. In this paper, I will examine three poems in detail (To Penshurst, Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, and Crossing Brooklyn Ferry) to compare and contrast how the topographical poem has been modified over the course of three hundred years.

To Penshurst is a poem celebrating the country estate of Robert Sidney. It is arguably the oldest topographical poem in the English canon, initiating the genre known as the 'country-house poem'. Ben Jonson published To Penshurst in 1616 during the reign of King James I, and therefore displays Jacobean sensibilities.

During a period when many of his contemporaries avoided publication, Jonson labored intensely to produce a collection of plays and poems entitled Works. To Penshurst was part of this collection. Although Jonson would have the honor of being one of England's earliest published authors, it was not a lucrative business. Jonson funded his work through patronage, a practice typical of the time and evident in To Penshurst. In return for the support of influential patrons like the Sidney family, poets often wrote "praise poetry" to honor or flatter them. This is no doubt the motivation behind To Penshurst.

During the seventeenth century, it was common practice for wealthy families to build country estates, known as prodigy houses, that where not intended to be inhabited year round. In his essay on the subject, Alastair Fowler notes that many of these country estates were quite extravagant, built only to receive the court during the sovereign's progression through the countryside:

"a characteristic feature of prodigy houses was their elaborate planning . . . they are carefully proportioned and usually symmetrical" (Fowler 270)

Penshurst did not fall into this category as noted in the first line of the poem, "Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show". It was an inherited estate that had grown organically through the centuries. Lacking mathematical or mystical proportions, Jonson was forced to elevate Penshurst beyond the architectural concepts that made other estates so famous. Drawing from his classical studies, Jonson achieved this sense of balance and harmony on a microcosmic scale.

Jonson builds the poetic frame of To Penshurst using rhyming iambic couplets, a form "associated with the elevated and noble" (Fussell 130). This poetic form not only elevates its subject, Penshusrt estate, but also supports Jonson's underlying royalist philosophy of social order. For the royalist, the "chain of command is one of re-presentation" (Lee 77); artistic form, as well as social order, should mirror the universal order evident in nature.

Prodigy homes, likewise, were built to mirror the mathematical intricacies of the universe. Lacking these carefully crafted proportions, Jonson asserts that Penshurst is not constructed with mere architectural elements (marble, polished pillars, and golden roofs) but with the inherent artistry of natural elements (soil, air, wood and water). Jonson, therefore, legitimizes the superiority of Penshurst by linking it to natural perfection while subordinating other famous country estates to the realm of human imitation.

The consistent rhyming and rhythmic pattern also create a foundation for the mathematical balance carried throughout the poem. To Penshurst can be divided a number of ways. The first half of the poem details the bounty of exterior while the second half details the hospitality of the interior. The poem also displays a temporal arrangement dividing it into thirds. The opening details the past: the Sidney's ancient inheritance. The middle describes the present bounty and enjoyment of Penshurst, while the poem closes with the nurturing of future generations.

Jonson also uses imagery to create a number of mathematical patterns. In lines 20-44, the bounty of Penshurst is represented through the cataloguing of 7 animals (deer, sheep, cows, rabbits, pheasants, and partridges), 3 fish (carps, pikes, and eels), and 7 fruits (cherry, plum, fig, grape, quince, apricot, peach). These fruits are further arranged within temporal and mathematical divisions. All seven fruits are compressed within three lines.

"The early cherry, with the later plum,

Fig, grape and quince, each in his time doth come;

The blushing apricot and woolly peach" (ll. 41-43)

Within these three lines the fruits are arranged in a 2/3/2 order.

The grounds of Penshurst are also divided geographically into 'Mount', Middle grounds', 'lower land', 'river', 'banks', and 'tops', which are then filled with a variety of triads. There are 3 types of trees: beech, chestnut, and oak. There are three mythological creatures: dryads, sylvan, and fauns, and three copses.

Like the mathematical proportions of the prodigy houses, the mathematical patterns in To Penshurst mirror classical ideals of universal order.

Within this frame work of natural order, Jonson super-imposes the idea of a social hierarchy. The list of visitors commences with the humble farmer and culminates with King James himself. To Penshurst not only acknowledges this social stratification but reinforces it through Jonson's underlying use of pattern. Margaret Tudeau-Clayton notes that Jonson often hid classical references within his work to "(re)produce the implied structure of authority - and hierarchy of privilege - between learned insiders and ignorant outsiders" (Tudeau-Clayton 82).

Jonson's topographical poem also moves from concrete pastoral images to abstract humanist ideals exemplifying Jacobean literature with its dedication to classical scholarship and reiteration of royalist principles.

In 1798, Wordsworth took a much different approach to the topographical poem. Where Jonson passively describes a place and its inherent order, Wordsworth describes the interaction and mutual transformation of person and place.

Wordsworth's Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey is renowned for its inception of what would become Romanticism. Composed during the 18^th Century debate between the intellectualism of the Enlightenment and the splintered faith of Christianity, Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey is an argument in favor of an autonomous spirituality.

Tintern Abbey is written in unrhymed free verse, mirroring the meditative substance of the poem. Wordsworth employs a five verse structure in which the third verse serves as a pivot. Wordsworth uses form to synthesize the ideology of the Enlightenment with the theology of Christianity and create a new spiritual way of being.

The first verse is very reminiscent of 18^th century landscape poetry in which generalized diction emphasizes the picturesque. The scope of time expressed in the first line draws out the vastness of nature. Although nature undergoes seasonal change, it adheres to a consistent pattern, allowing a visitor to return after five years and experience the sound of the same river and recognize the same cliffs. This verse is one of passive observation, with inactive verbs like "behold", "view", and "see", as nature leaves her impression on man. This verse essentially embodies the Enlightenment and its lifeless view of nature and serves as a foil for the following verses.

In the second verse, the observer internalizes nature as he recalls its splendor in the "lonely rooms" of towns and cities. Nature becomes a source of emotion "felt in the blood, felt along the heart" (ll. 28), that has the capacity to renew "[w]ith tranquil restoration" (ll. 30). The progress of verse two moves from a physical experience to a moral experience and finally to a mystical experience, echoing the Christian hierarchy of awareness. Within the Christian realm, the base level of awareness is that of the physical world. Above the baseness of the material world lies the righteousness of morality. Finally, the highest level of awareness is that of the mystical, the realm of God, his angels, and the eternal soul. By utilizing this model, Wordsworth embraces nature, allowing it to enter into and modify the poet's spirit creating a moment of transcendence.

As noted by Brain Barbour in his essay, the third verse, and consequentially the shortest verse, serves as a transition from "the definition of paragraphs one and two and . . . the defense and proclamation of paragraphs four and five" (Barbour 155). This turn hinges on the phrase "If this/Be but a vain belief". After defining his spiritual transformation, Wordsworth supports this belief with the evidence of personal experience. The compressed paragraph at the center of the poem operates as a transition from observation and possession to reflection and assertion.

Visually, the eight lines of verse three appear compressed between the larger paragraphs: like the fulcrum of a scale. Wordsworth uses this fulcrum to add weight to his argument. Although verse one has 22 lines and verse two has 28, verses four and five are approximately twice as long, making them appear heavier.

In verse four, Wordsworth intertwines elements of both the Enlightenment and Christianity with the historical context of his own experience. Thematically, this verse simultaneously progresses in three modes. Historically, verse four begins with recollections of childhood and moves through to the present. This historical transition serves to illustrate Wordsworth's changing relationship with nature. Lines 66-84 describe a physical relationship with nature. Wordsworth emphasizes this with words like "coarser pleasures", "passion", and "appetite". This is a passive Wordsworth submitting to the will of nature, a corporal being "led" through a material plane.

However, as Wordsworth matures he learns:

"To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but learning oftentimes

The still, sad music of humanity" (ll. 89-91)

This marks the beginning of his mystical experience with nature. Wordsworth emphasizes this movement with words like "presence", "light", and "spirit". The passive experience of nature has now succumbed to the subjective experience of nature.

Finally, viewing the passive experience through the subjective experience creates a moral experience with nature:

"In nature and the language of the sense

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

Of my moral being." (ll. 108-111)

Again, Wordsworth uses words like "anchor", "guide" and "guardian" to emphasize this transition.

Not only does Wordsworth utilize the Christian hierarchy of awareness, but he also incorporates the Enlightenment hierarchy of faculties, moving from appetite to reason.

In the final verse, Wordsworth verbalizes his intensely personal experience with another (his sister Dorothy). With the use of words like "prayer", "joy", "faith", "blessings", "lofty", "worshipper" and "holier", Wordsworth emphasizes his new religious view.

What makes Tintern Abbey so remarkable, as a topographical poem, is the way in which it placed "the individual at the very center of all life and all experience" (431). According to Thrall, Hibbard and Holman, that is the very definition of Romanticism.

Although Wordsworth believed "all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings . . . being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility" (Preface to Lyrical Ballads 651), Walt Whitman reveled in the sensual, especially the visual. His 1881 topographical poem Crossing Brooklyn Ferry is "the very height of Whitman's eye technique" (Meyer 89). Where Tintern Abbey begins with "and again I hear", Whitman declares "I see you face to face!" By creatively using image and syntax, Whitman engenders a mystical expression of time and space.

Like Wordsworth, Whitman composes in unrhymed, paragraph verse. Divided into nine sections, Whitman utilizes a catalogue technique to build momentum and create rhythm. With syntax, Whitman moves back and forward through time, drawing himself close to and further away from the reader mirroring the ebb and flow of the flood-tide.

In the first section, Whitman personifies object/world with the first line "Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!" while the "you" in the third line seems to objectify the crowds of men and women. In the fourth line the "you" represents to reader, while the "you" of the fifth line represents the future generations. This repeated shift in syntax within the first section of the poem sets a rhythmic precedent for the poem in which Whitman will push and pull the reader back and forward through time creating a pattern of distance and intimacy between the reader and the poet.

In the second section, Whitman distances himself from the reader, by transitioning from "me" to "others". In this section he "disappears", giving the reader the sensation that he has been carried away by the current of the river. However, he returns abruptly in the second line of the third section ("I am here with you"), pushed back to the reader in a syntactical wave only to be draw away again by the shift to past tense of verbs like "watched", "saw", and "look'd". These verbs not only serve a rhythmical function, but also emphasize the importance of Whitman's visual style.

Whitman utilizes this strong visual component in section three as he demonstrates the power of his catalogue technique. It is not a mere listing of items, but a carefully crafted selection of images intended to generate symbolic meaning. In line 28, Whitman begins with the sea-gulls:

"This first image in the long series begins by directing the imagination upward, where it is immediately held by the floating, oscillating motion of the birds" (Coffman 226)

The description of the gulls not only captures movement but the shifting of light as "glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left the rest in strong shadows" (ll. 29). Whitman uses the rest of the images in this section to build on the idea of undulation and the contrast between light and dark. Whitman's symbolism is not the borrowed symbolism of classical literature, but a new symbolism created through interdependent images.

In section four, Whitman draws himself back to the reader with the confession of emotional involvement, "I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river" while the past tense nature of the verb still maintains the pull of the receding wave. This ebb of Whitman's intimacy pulls itself from the shore of the readers mind in the fifth section as he describes his life in the past tense and grows dark and shadowy in the sixth section as Whitman confesses doubts and misdeeds. In the seventh section, however, he rushes back in: "Closer yet I approach you" (ll 86), until he achieves unity of experience in section eight: "We understand then do we not? / What I promis'd without mentioning it, have you not accepted?"

Finally, in section nine, Whitman returns to his catalogue first presented in section three. However, there are a few significant changes. The lines shift from fragments to imperatives, becoming mystical incantations. The towering masts of the Manhattan shifts are brought forward in the catalogue; with the command "stand up" emphasizing the pride each small element should have has part of a greater whole. The foundry smoke is commanded to "cast" its light over the roof tops but there is not mention of it passing down into the "clefts of the streets".

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry does not tell the story of passing through time, of transcending the physical, but provides the experience to the reader. For Wordsworth, nature served as guardian and nurse. For Whitman, all aspects of existence, natural and man made, serve as "dumb, beautiful ministers". Unlike Wordsworth's passion reflected in tranquility, Whitman is willing to receive the world "with free sense at last . . . insatiate henceforward" (ll. 127). Compared to Jonson's iambic rhyming couplets, Whitman's rhythm feels wild and unrestrained, like the American landscape it poured forth from. And Whitman's desperate attempt to unify all stands in stark contrast to Jonson's stratified order. Each topographical poem, however, remarkably represents the creative intuitions of the author the influences of their time.

Works Cited

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