Henry Vaughan

The British poet Henry Vaughan (1621-1695), one of the finest poets of the metaphysical school, wrote verse marked by mystical intensity, sensitivity to nature, tranquility of tone, and power of wording.

Henry Vaughan was born in Brecknockshire, Wales. He and his twin brother Thomas received their early education in Wales and in 1638 matriculated at Jesus College, Oxford. Unlike his brother, who remained to receive a degree and become a noted philosopher, Henry left Oxford without a degree to pursue a law career in London. At the outbreak of the civil war in 1642, Vaughan returned to Wales, occupied himself in the law, and then entered military service in the royalist cause. Later in life he practiced medicine, and he probably studied it during these years.

Vaughan apparently began writing poetry in the same decade. In 1646 he published his Poems, half of which consisted of a translation of Juvenal's tenth satire. The next year he wrote the preface to a second volume, Olor Iscanus (The Swan of Usk), which did not appear until 1651; like the earlier volume, it comprises secular poems and translations and shows little inspiration. In 1648 he seems to have undergone a religious conversion, perhaps connected with the death of a brother that year.

The major poetry of Vaughan, all religious in nature, was published in 1650 and 1655 in the two parts of Silex scintillans (Sparkling Flint). Some of the best poems in it are "The Morning Watch, " "The Retreat, " "Childhood, " "The Dawning, " and "Peace." He published more religious verse and prose in his later years, and a number of translations, but nothing after the great volumes of the 1650s retains much interest. He died in Wales on April 23, 1695.

Vaughan is a poet in whom it is easy to trace the influence of others, particularly the wit of John Donne and the quiet, understated, dramatic technique of George Herbert, to whom he credited his religious conversion. At its weakest Vaughan's verse is too plainly derivative, and not infrequently a poem remains valuable today for no more than a stanza or a line. At his best, however—a best that created some of the most beautiful lyrics in English poetry— his voice is profoundly personal, and his ability to maintain the emotional tension of a poem can be impressive. Much of his power derives from a mystical Christian Neoplatonism that he does not share with his poetic masters and that reveals itself in images of dazzling light, in cosmic visions, and in a fusion of Platonic concepts, such as the descent of man from the "sea of light" of his childhood to an alienated adulthood, expressed in biblical motifs, images, and language. His genius can best be suggested by the opening of "The World, " in which a mystical vision is successfully conveyed in the boldest tone of understatement: "I saw eternity the other night/ Like a great ring of pure and endless light, / All calm as it was bright…."

Further Reading

The standard biography of Vaughan is Francis E. Hutchinson, Henry Vaughan: A Life and Interpretation (1947). Good critical accounts are in Helen C. White, The Metaphysical Poets: A Study in Religious Experience (1936); Douglas Bush, English Literature of the Earlier Seventeenth Century (1945; 2d ed. 1962), the best source for information on literary backgrounds as well; and Joan Bennett, Five Metaphysical Poets (1964).

Additional Sources

Davies, Stevie, Henry Vaughan, Bridgend, Mid Glamorgan, Wales: Seren; Chester Springs, PA: U.S. distributor, Dufour Editions, 1995. □

Vaughan, Henry (1621–95), twin brother of T. Vaughan, was born at Newton-upon-Usk, Breconshire. His wooing of his first wife Catherine is apparently recalled in the poem ‘Upon the Priory Grove’ printed in Poems with the Tenth Satire of Juvenal Englished (1646), his first collection. His second, Olor Iscanus (‘The Swan of Usk’), has a dedication bearing the date 1647, but was not published till 1651. The poems in these two volumes are almost wholly secular and there is little in them that anticipates the great religious poetry of Vaughan's next volume, Silex Scintillans (1650). Further devotional works followed: The Mount of Olives, or Solitary Devotions (1652), Flores Solitudinis (1654), and the second edition (with a second part) of Silex Scintillans (1655), in which he acknowledges his debt to G. Herbert. Vaughan's first wife having died, he married her younger sister Elizabeth, probably in 1655. They had a son, Henry, and three daughters. According to a letter he sent to Aubrey in 1673 he had by that date been practising physic ‘for many years with good success’.

Vaughan's religious poetry is uneven, but its best moments, like the start of ‘The World’ (‘I saw Eternity the other night’), are wholly distinctive, and have prevailed with critics to class him as a ‘mystic’. He was seized with the idea of childish innocence, and the child's recollections of prenatal glory. He writes, in ‘The Retreat’, of his own ‘Angel-infancy’, when he would muse on clouds and flowers and see in them ‘Some shadows of eternity’. Vaughan's fascination with hermeticism, and particularly with the idea of sympathetic bonds uniting microcosm and macrocosm, is clear in his poems, many of which share ideas and even phrases with his brother Thomas's treatises. On the title pages of Olor Iscanus and Silex Scintillans Vaughan calls himself a ‘Silurist’, presumably because his native Brecon was anciently inhabited by the British tribe of Silures.

His brother Thomas died in 1666, and in 1678 Thalia Rediviva, containing poems by both twins, was published. His later life was marred by litigious feuds between his first and second families.

Henry Vaughan , 1622–95, one of the English metaphysical poets . Born in Breconshire, Wales, he signed himself Silurist, after the ancient inhabitants of that region. After leaving Oxford, where he did not take a degree, he turned to the study of law. Later he switched to medicine and spent his life as a highly respected physician. His greatest poetry is contained in Silex Scintillans (1650; second part, 1655), which includes "The Ascension Hymn,""The World,""Quickness,""The Retreat," and "They are all gone into the world of light." Though he openly admitted his indebtedness to George Herbert , where Herbert celebrates the institution of the Church, Vaughan is more interested in natural objects and in a mystical communion with nature. Vaughan's other works include Poems (1646), Olor Iscanus (1651), Thalia Rediviva (1678), The Mount of Olives (1652), and Flores Solitudinis (1654).

Bibliography: See edition of his works edited by L. C. Martin (2d ed. 1957); complete poems edited by A. Rudrum (1981); biography by F. E. Hutchinson (1947); studies by E. Holmes (1932, repr. 1967), R. Garner (1959), R. A. Durr (1962), T. O. Calhoun (1981).

Vaughan, Henry (1622–95), poet. He practised medicine in Brecon and from c.1650 at Newton-by-Usk. A religious experience, due partly perhaps to the death of a brother and a serious illness, issued in a collection of spiritual poems, Silex Scintillans (1650–55). They are marked by an atmosphere of intense and sustained religious fervour. Vaughan is often numbered among the ‘Metaphysical Poets’.

Vaughan, Henry (1622–95). Welsh doctor and Metaphysical poet, known as the Silurist. His main work, Silex Scintillans (The Flashing Flint) was influenced by G. Herbert. Aware of the restlessness of human nature and of the experience of the absence of God, he is especially remembered for vivid images of mystical vision.

Vaughan, Henry (1622–95) Welsh poet. His metaphysical poetry was inspired by the religious verse of George Herbert. Vaughan's masterpiece, Silex Scintillans (1650, revised 1655), meditates on man and nature.