Henry Vaughan

Henry Vaughan (1621—1695) was a 17th century Welsh writer, best known for his religious poems. He is commonly classed among the Metaphysical poets.

Life

He was born at his mother's property of Newton, or Trenewydd, near to Tretower, on the river Usk, between the Brecon Beacons and the Black Mountains, and he spent most of his life there. He was probably bilingual in Welsh and English, though his published writings were only in English and Latin.

His twin brother Thomas took a degree at Oxford University, which enabled him to become rector of Llansantffraid, their native parish; but Henry, although he too went to Oxford and studied law in London, does not appear to have acquired any qualification. His period in London was cut short by the Civil War, in which he and his brothers almost certainly fought on the royalist side. After that he remained at Newton, which he eventually inherited, and practised as a physician, though it is not known what training (if any) he had. He married Catherine Wise, and, after her death, her sister Elizabeth, and had four children by each.

Thomas Vaughan, on being ejected from his living, moved to London, where he practised and published works on hermetic philosophy, and died in 1666. Henry died on 23 April 1695.

Poetry

In 1646 Henry Vaughan published some capable but fairly conventional and undistinguished poems together with a free translation of the tenth satire of Juvenal. Further secular poems and translations written after that were published in 1651, allegedly by A Friend, who claimed to have rescued them after they had been condemned by the author. These appeared under the title of Olor Iscanus (the swan of the Usk). Some of them contain compelling images, and the letters to friends display a witty humour. His preferred form in this selection was the heroic couplet.

Meanwhile he had published in 1650 Silex Scintillans (sparking flint), a collection of purely religious poetry. It is not known whether Wordsworth knew of Vaughan's poem The Retreate ("Happy those early days when I/Shone in my Angel-infancy") when he wrote his Ode Intimations of Immortality on much the same subject. Another poem, The World ("I saw Eternity the other night/Like a great ring of pure and endless light/All calm as it was bright"), is an extraordinary combination of visualisation, religious sentiment and satire. Silex Scintillans reappeared in 1655 with a preface attacking "the wits" and a second part added. It included two poems found in many anthologies, "They are all gone into the world of light", lamenting the deaths of friends; and The Night, in which Vaughan presents a semi-mystical picture of himself. In the preface he acknowledged the influence of George Herbert.

No further poetry was published until 1678, when Thalia Rediviva collected miscellaneous poems by both Henry and Thomas. In this he could safely publish poems attacking the religious system of the Commonwealth, which he had withheld before.

Prose

Henry Vaughan also wrote several devotional works, and translations both religious and hermetical.