Vaughan

About the Author

Henry Vaughan (1621 - 1695) was a Welsh author, physician and METAPHYSICAL poet. He is chiefly known for his RELIGIOUS POETRY contained in Silex Scintillans, which was published in 1650, with a second part published in 1655. Henry Vaughan, the major Welsh poet of the Commonwealth period, has been among the writers benefiting most from the twentieth-century revival of interest in the poetry of John Donne and his followers. Vaughan's early poems place him among the "Sons of Ben," in the company of other imitators of Ben Jonson, such as the Cavalier poets Sir William Davenant and Thomas Carew. (BUT HE GREW TO HATE THAT EARLIER STUFF...) His poetry from the late 1640s and 1650s, however, published in the two editions of Silex Scintillans (1650, 1655), makes clear his extensive knowledge of the poetry of Donne and, especially, of George Herbert. WORSHIPPED HERBERT'S WORK

Historical Note

On 3 January 1645 Parliament declared the Book of Common Prayer illegal, and a week later William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, was executed on Tower Hill. Four years later Charles I followed his archbishop to the scaffold. Anglican worship was officially forbidden, and it appeared unlikely ever to be restored. Penalties for noncompliance with the new order of worship were progressively increased until, after 15 December 1655, any member of the Church of England daring to preach or administer sacraments would be punished with imprisonment or exile. REMOVAL OF HIERARCHICAL AUTHORITY IN THE CHURCH!! In considering this stage of Vaughan's career, therefore, one must keep firmly in mind the situation of Anglicans after the Civil War. That community where a poet/priest like George Herbert could find his understanding of God through participation in the tradition of liturgical enactment enabled by the Book of Common Prayer was now absent. In the two editions of Silex Scintillans, Vaughan is the chronicler of the experience of that community when its source of Christian identity was no longer available. KEEPING THE ANGLICAN EXPERIENCE ALIVE Vaughan's concern was to maintain at least something of the Anglican experience as a part, although of necessity a private part, of English life in the 1640s and 1650s. In echoes of the language of the Book of Common Prayer, as well as in echoes of Herbert's meditations on its disciplines, Vaughan maintained the viability of that language for addressing and articulating the situation in which the Church of England now found itself. Vaughan's claim is that such efforts become one way of making the proclamation that even those events that deprive the writer and the reader of so much that is essential may in fact be God's actions to fulfill rather than to destroy what has been lost. his poetry in Silex Scintillans seeks to be flashes of light, or sparks struck in the darkness, seeking to enflame the faithful and give them a sense of hope even in the midst of such adversity. The shift in Vaughan's poetic attention from the secular to the sacred has often been deemed a conversion; such a view does not take seriously the pervasive character of religion in English national life of the seventeenth century. Religion was always an abiding aspect of daily life; Vaughan's addressing of it in his poetry written during his late twenties is at most a shift in, and focusing of, the poet's attention. The public, and perhaps to a degree the private, world seemed a difficult place: "And what else is the World but a Wildernesse," he would write in The Mount of Olives, "A darksome, intricate wood full of Ambushes and dangers; a Forrest where spiritual hunters, principalities and powers spread their nets, and compasse it about." Vaughan set out in the face of such a world to remind his readers of what had been lost, to provide them with a source of echoes and allusions to keep memories alive, and, as well, to guide them in the conduct of life in this special sort of world, to make the time of Anglican suffering a redemptive rather than merely destructive time. **This essentially didactic enterprise--to teach his readers how to understand membership in a church whose body is absent and thus to keep faith with those who have gone before so that it will be possible for others to come after--is Vaughan's undertaking in Silex Scintillans . ** To achieve that intention he used the Anglican resources still available, viewing the Bible as a text for articulating present circumstances and believing that memories of prayer book rites still lingered or were still available either through private observation of the daily offices or occasional, clandestine sacramental use. USE'S HERBERT'S TEMPLE AS REPLACEMENT FOR ANGLICAN SERVICE At the same time he added yet another allusive process, this to George Herbert's Temple (1633). In the experience of reading Silex Scintillans, the context of The Temple functions in lieu of the absent Anglican services. Using The Temple as a frame of reference cannot take the place of participation in prayer book rites; it can only add to the sense of loss by reminding the reader of their absence. But it can serve as a way of evoking and defining that which cannot otherwise be known--the experience of ongoing public involvement in those rites--in a way that furthered Vaughan's desire to produce continued faithfulness to the community created by those rites. HERBERT EVERYWHERE Vaughan's extensive indebtedness to Herbert can be found in echoes and allusions as brief as a word or phrase or as extensive as a poem or group of poems. So thoroughly does Vaughan invoke Herbert's text and allow it to speak from within his own that there is hardly a poem, or even a passage within a poem, in either the 1650 or the 1655 edition of Silex Scintillans, that does not exhibit some relationship to Herbert's work. What Vaughan thus offered his Anglican readers is the incentive to endure present troubles by defining them as crossings related to Christ's Cross. Seen in this respect, these troubles make possible the return of the one who is now perceived as absent. Vaughan could still praise God for present action--"How rich, O Lord! how fresh thy visits are!" ("Unprofitableness")--but he emphasizes such visits as sustenance in the struggle to endure in anticipation of God's actions yet to come rather than as ongoing actions of God. Vaughan constructs for his reader a movement through Silex I from the difficulty in articulating and interpreting experience acted out in "Regeneration" toward an increasing ability to articulate and thus to endure, brought about by the growing emphasis on the present as preparation for what is to come. This is characterized by the speaker's self-dramatization in the traditional stances of confessional and intercessory prayer, lament, and joy found in expectation. Gradually, the interpretive difficulties of "Regeneration" are redefined as part of what must be offered to God in this time of waiting.

Day of Judgment

Quotes: (Begins with imagery of great fires overtaking the Earth - the end of the world) When one loud blast shall rend the deep, And from the womb of Earth Summon up all that are asleep Unto a second birth, When Thou shalt make the clouds Thy seat, And in the open air The quick and dead, both small and great, Must to Thy bar repair; O then it will be all too late To say, "What shall I do?" Repentance there is out of date, And so is mercy too. (THERE IS A TIME THAT IS TOO LATE) Prepare, prepare me then, O God! And let me now begin, To feel my loving Father's rod Killing the man of sin! Give me, O give me crosses here, Still more afflictions lend; That pill, though bitter, is most dear That brings health in the end. Lord God, I beg nor friends nor wealth, But pray against them both; Three things I'd have, my soul's chief health, And of these same loathe; A living faith, a heart of flesh, The world an enemy; (TO FOCUS ON HEAVEN?) This last will keep the first two fresh, And bring me where I'd be. 1 Peter 4.7. Now the end of all things is at hand; be you therefore sober, and watching in prayer. OPPOSITE OF CARPE DIEM - END OF THE WORLD MEANS GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER AND PAY FOR YOUR SINS BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE Strikingly the opposite of a carpe diem poem in the sense that the inevitable end of days is employed not a reason to indulge in love, sex out of wedlock, or wine, but rather a reason to undergo afflictions in order to get right with God and save your soul. REPENTANCE HAS A DEADLINE By the time the Day of Judgment comes, it will be too late for repentance AND mercy.

The World

The theme of "The World" is religious and didactic. Readers need not search long to understand Vaughan's intention, as he employs hard-hitting imagery of salvation and damnation. The postscript from John 2 reiterates the poem's meaning. Vaughan's theme is that salvation and eternal life, peace and happiness, exist only through God. Life not devoted to God is ruined now and forever. The way to salvation is evident: The vain pursuits of this life must be abandoned. At issue for Vaughan are lives devoted to the pursuit of pleasure, exemplified by the lover; the pursuit of power, embodied in the "darksome States-man"; and the pursuit of wealth, represented by the miser. Vaughan derides these figures, their activities and values, as false, destructive, and ultimately futile. The central problem in all these ungodly pursuits is that they fail to address the main purpose of living, the worship of God. Lives that do not address this end become bogged down in search of other ends that have no lasting significance and are therefore worthless. The power seeker, the money worshiper, even the lover, fail, not only in terms of their own personal happiness and possible redemption, but also by inflicting their desires on others, to whom they cause harm because their activities are not informed with God-centered values. Those who do not understand this fundamental religious and moral truth are blind and doomed to live in a moral, spiritual, and religious darkness. In the terms of the poem, the mass of humanity is bound to suffer this fate. Only the enlightened few who recognize the promise of salvation are capable of freeing themselves from this ultimate condition of desolation. The poet seems to say, "Reader, wake up. Salvation awaits those who repent as surely as eternal damnation awaits those who do not." The important thing about all three symbols of worldly love lecher, statesman, and miser-is that they only desire; they do not fulfill: the lover has no beloved, the statesman no honor beyond mob honor, and the miser no possessions which he can really possess. Theirs is a love which, by the temporal nature of its ends and the cumulative nature of its desire, cannot but remain unfulfilled. In contrast to these images of weariness and mere complexity stands the single unitive image which figures "the love of the Father"-the image of the Bride and her Bridegroom.

The Night

This is a poem from the earlier (1650) edition of Silex Scintillans. Like many of Vaughan's poems, it is a meditation on a Bible verse. This poem focuses on John 3:2, taken from the account of a night-time meeting between Jesus and a Jewish religious leader called Nicodemus. The poem is partly about Nicodemus and his search for enlightenment at night and partly about the night itself and its spiritual significance. It highlights the paradox of the night being a time of spiritual light, sight and revelation. The poem concludes with a final prayer in stanza 9. At the heart of God is 'A deep but dazzling darkness'. This is not his perception ('some say'); nevertheless it chimes in exactly with his imagery of light. This is the final oxymoron, enshrining the paradox that light can only be seen in darkness. The final plea for invisibility is the mystic's plea not to have to live in this world, but to be able to live in a purely spiritual world. 9. There is in God, some say, A deep but dazzling darkness, as men here Say it is late and dusky, because they See not all clear. O for that night! where I in Him Might live invisible and dim!