"To Penshurst" is in the genre of country house poems, a type of poetry in which a poet flattered or praised a patron by writing a poem about his estate.
Jonson uses a number of poetic devices in this poem. One is apostrophe. Apostrophe occurs when a poet directly addresses an inanimate object, a dead person, or a person who is absent. In this case, Jonson speaks directly to the house, Penshurst, in respectful tones:
Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show
Of touch or marble, nor canst boast a row
The lines above also use the poetic device of rhyming couplets—in this case through the words "show" and "row." This creates a pleasing, regular rhythm.
Jonson employs antithesis , contrasting Penshurst favorably to other country estates which are grander but which achieve their grandeur at the expense of others. At Penshurst, however, we learn...
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that:
And though thy walls be of the country stone,
They’re reared with no man’s ruin, no man’s groan;
There’s none that dwell about them wish them down
The early cherry, with the later plum,Jonson also uses images that allude to paradise, implying that Penshurst is like the garden of Eden, where nobody has to work too hard. In this idyllic world, the animals want to be killed and the fish to be caught:
Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come;
The blushing apricot and woolly peach
Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach.
The painted partridge lies in every field,These poetic devices build a positive picture of Penshurst. The estate becomes a symbol of paradise.
And for thy mess is willing to be killed....
Fat aged carps...run into thy net
This is not an easy poem to explicate. I won't list all of the poetic devices Jonson uses, but here are a few examples to get you started.
allusion: there are several references to characters from Greek mythology, such as dryads, Bacchus, Pan, the Muses, satyrs, fauns, etc.
alliteration: in lines 12 and 13 there are the "broad breech" and "taller tree"; in lines 28 and 29 we find "purpled pheasant" and "painted partridge"
rhyme: the poem is a series of couplets that rhyme AABBCCDD etc.
imagery: food, plants and animals
personification: in line 21, the house is spoken of as a host who feasts or exercises friends; in lines 32 and 33 the ponds pay a tribute (like a tax) to the house
You might say that the entire poem is a metaphor for England: just as Penshurst is the ideal, flourishing house, so also England is the ideal, flourishing nation.
I hope this helps you. As I said before, this is not an easy poem!
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