To Penshurst Literary Elements

The speaker is Jonson, who knows Penshurst well. Most of the poem is written from a distance, but in the second half, Jonson uses the first person to narrate his own experience as a guest in Penshurst.

The form is heroic couplets, or a series of end-rhymed couplets. The meter is iambic pentameter, or lines composed of 10 syllables, alternating between stressed and unstressed, and beginning on an unstressed syllable.

Jonson uses simile to describe the garden flowers as "fresh as the air, and new as are the hours."

Jonson uses alliteration throughout. See, for example, alliteration of /p/, "polished pillars," line 3; alliteration of /w/, "Of wood, of water," line 8; alliteration of /b//, "Beneath the broad beach," line 12.

Ironically, the beautiful and elaborate houses of the other nobles only display how superficial and lacking those men truly are.

Country-house poetry

Penshurst Manor, rural England

Laudatory, celebratory

The protagonist is Sidney.

The major conflict is between the showy gaudiness of other stately homes, and what Jonson sees as the true beauty of Sidney's fertile and ancient estate.

The climax comes in the poem's final two lines, where Jonson resolves the conflict between Sidney's home and other homes introduced at the beginning of the poem, by writing that those men "build" while Sidney "truly dwells." In other words, their manors are only superficially theirs, while Penshurst truly represents Sidney.

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The opening lines allude to the description of the Temple of Solomon in the Bible—one of the most famously elaborate structures for a Christian audience in this period. Later in the poem, Jonson alludes extensively to classical myth, describing Penshurst as a place that would be at home in the mythical "golden age" of Greek legend, when everything was better.

The whole house stands in metonymically for Penshurst: its qualities of generosity, openness, beauty, and rational organization are meant to represent the characteristics of Jonson's patron.

Jonson personifies the fish and animals, describing them as choosing to be eaten by the lord.

Much of the poem is devoted to hyperbolic praise of the estate. Sidney himself would have known this wasn't a realistic representation of his estate, but rather the poet playing up what he sees as the key qualities of Penshurst. Some of the most obvious hyperbole appears in the representations of the eels leaping onto shore to be eaten and the descriptions of the extravagant gifts brought by every visitor to Penshurst.

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