To Penshurst

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1616

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

The Vine-Covered Estate Wall

The pivotal movement in the poem occurs in Lines 43-47 when the poet turns his attention from the natural wealth of the Penshurst estate to the family who lives there. The pivot rests on the vine-covered walls that enclose it. Within a contemporary culture-wide perception of the function of walls, walls presumably are intended to protect, keep the unwanted out, mark territory in a gesture of bald ownership, and ultimately maintain a secured parameter around all that is claimed. Walls, imposing and absolute, keep out. Such, the poet ruefully notes, defines the steeped and high-reaching boundary walls of estates all about Penshurst, estates built by the new rich jealous of their property and eager to separate themselves. But not so much the Sydney estate.

The poet, to establish the Sydney family’s largesse and its code of hospitality, lingers long enough on the estate wall to reveal that the wall itself is something less than imposing. It is, indeed, barely the height of child, a reassuring and inviting metaphor, and in fact invites children to pluck fruits from its abundant vines. The foundation “country stone” (Line 45) of the wall itself is thus softened, hidden by the gentle green curl of the wild vines, greenery that makes the potentially imposing face of an estate wall ironic. The poet goes on to underscore that sense of hospitality by assuring that all are welcomed into Penshurst—neighbors and strangers “[a]ll come in” (Line 48) through the gates of that wall unrestricted and unchallenged. In this, the estate wall invites rather than protects, assures rather than intimidates, welcomes rather than encloses.

Natural Wealth

What is curious is that a poem celebrating a family home spends little time actually inside that home and never actually opens up about the furnishings, the appointments, the interior decorating presumably that defines the home of the wealthy. Rather, wealth here is associated with nature, not people. Certainly, the poet creates a wide-scope picture of the natural beauty and wealth of the Penshurst estate as he lovingly inventories the estate’s plethora of wild game and flourishing plants and vegetation as well as its wealth of farm animals, horses, pigs, cows, and chickens, which are all part of the estate’s complex and harmonic economy. In detailing the natural abundance of the estate, the poet suggests how such wealth reflects the spiritual wealth of the family itself, the parents and their children. The poem never steps into the gilded halls of the estate itself and never inventories the family’s furnishings, decorations, or artifacts. That would be gauche and beneath the code of noblesse oblige that defines the Sydney family. Indeed, the estate owners who have built their manors all about the Penshurst grounds, those garish “proud, ambitious heaps” (Line 101) with their flashy ornamental touches of polished marble and shiny gold, would be far more likely to demand any poem that celebrates their estate begin and end inside the estate’s buildings and their appointments, showing off the excessive ostentation that wealth has brought them. Not so much for Penshurst. Rather the poet allows the natural wealth around the estate to suggest the wealth within the home by discussing not merely the furnishings but the interior wealth of the family and its sense of virtue and right conduct.

The “Liberal Board”

In Line 59, the poet, himself a guest at Penshurst, details the dining experience the Sydney family offers to their visitors, neighbors, and strangers alike. That “liberal board,” the board refers to the table and liberal refers to how crowded the table would be with an assortment of food and drink, symbolizes the code of Christian hospitality the poem finds in the Sydney family. Wealth has brought with it a commitment to sharing. For a Christian culture, there was no more sublime example of the reward of hospitality than the gospel narratives of the pilgrim journey of Christ and the apostles. Penniless and homeless, the epitome of those (like Jonson) without, Christ and his apostles relied time and again on the generosity of those with. In turn, Christ, having few material possessions, defined the virtue of hospitality, most notably with the miracle of the loaves and fishes that fed the masses gathered to hear him preach.

In one light, of course, Jonson’s unabashed paean to the Sydney family’s generosity can seem sycophantic and self-serving—after all, he lived on their dole for years—but there is more to it. Jonson uses the example of the Sydney family to reveal that for the aristocracy generosity is expected, not so much a show of wealth or as a shallow gesture but rather as a way of life. Dinner was not a meal; it was a template for a life well lived. When Jonson observes in lines 68-72 how the Sydneys refuse to do what other wealthy families routinely do (enjoy the best meat and drink themselves but serve guests the not-so-best meat and drink) and share the best with all their visitors, the poem elevates the dining table to a symbol of virtuous behavior and the code of honor that defines, for the poet, the moral character of Britain’s landed wealthy.