(9) On Vaughans use of nature see, Robert Duvall, "The Biblical Character of
Henry Vaughan's Silex Scintillans" PCP, 6 (1971), 13-19; Georgia B.
In a moving rendition, Richard Lovelace, the famous Cavalier poet, warns that "water'd eyes but swell our Woes," since fate is a bully who "whips us first until we weep" and then continues to whip because he sees us "a-weeping." The only way to defeat him is to take a brave stand: "One gallant thorough-made Resolve / Doth Starry Influence dissolve." In
Henry Vaughan's equally fine rendition, we read,
Henry Vaughan serves, alongside Lady Anne Conway and Margaret Cavendish, as a counter to the forces threatening the earth's integrity.
Hutchinson,
Henry Vaughan: A Life and Interpretation (Oxford, 1947), 181-94; Stevie Davies,
Henry Vaughan (Mid Glamorgan, Wales, 1995), 12 13, 172, 180, 187-90.
"July Word" somewhat resembles
Henry Vaughan's "The Retreat," wherein the virginal soul can know "Bright shoots of Everlastingness." The Aegean topos of his childhood still dazzles his "psyche," or soul, but whereas in athletic youth he could apprehend it "by swimming," now it is "by studying." The "Body of Summer" from his second book of poems still receives the metaphorical sun where he holds the cicada, who sings, says Archilochus, irrepressibly as the poet, and who is Zeus in the Galaxies' eternal summers.
What was so rare about him was his sense of dissident national identity: he belonged to the England of the Elizabethan philosopher/astrologer John Dee, of the 17th-century diarist and antiquarian John Evelyn and the mystic and medical man Sir Thomas Browne, and of the metaphysical poets--John Donne, George Herbert,
Henry Vaughan. As a younger friend of his remarked recently, he was never deeply involved in gay politics until they caught up with him.
Though a working knowledge of these poets would be helpful to the reader, particularly with respect to the work of John Donne, George Herbert, and
Henry Vaughan, it is not absolutely necessary.
Traherne was not discovered as a poet until early in the 20th century; his manuscripts, which were recovered in 1895 from a London bookbarrow, were at first ascribed to
Henry Vaughan. His best - known verse is included in Poetical Works (1903) and Poems of Felicity (1910).
Byline:
Henry Vaughan and Jennifer Cockerell Reporters
Henry Vaughan, 26, sales assistant, Newcastle: I would have to be pretty much unable to get out of bed to come into work, perhaps with a fever.
Convinced they had been written by
Henry Vaughan (c1622-1695), he showed them to Dr.
Henry Vaughan's Silex Scintillans: Scripture Uses is based on West's Cambridge dissertation, written under the supervision of the late Jeremy Maule.