HENRY VAUGHAN, SILURIST:

THE INDWELLING OF GOD IN NATURE

by

Karleen Middleton Quin

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.

Department of English, McGill University, MOntreal. April 1960 PREFACE

My primary text in this paper is The Works of Henry Vaughan, edited by L.C. Martin, second edition (Oxford, 1957). Since there is no alphabetical list of the poems in this edition, a list of all poems cited with the number of the page on which they appear has been appended to this paper for the convenience of the reader. Throughout the paper references to the poems will be by short title and line number only. I am indebted to the research of E.L. Marilla, compiled in A Comprehensive Bibliography of Henry Vaughan (University, Ala., 1948), which, despite sorne errors in judgement and a few notable omissions, is an invaluable starting point for the student in secondary research.

I wish to express my thanks to the librarians of the Redpath Library, McGill University (in particular Miss N. Johnson of the Interlibrary Loan Department) and of the Widener Library, Harvard University for assisting me in obtaining the necessary material for this work.

K.M. Quin

ii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Preface • • • . . . • • . . . • • • • • . . . . . ii Introduction ...... 1 Chapter -I Biography and Vaughan as Nature Poet ...... Chapter II The Eternal Life and Light Symbolism ...... 31 Chapter III

Intelli6ence and Sentience on the Part of Sub-Human and Inanimate Matter • • • • • • • • • 53 Chapter IV The Celestial-Terrestrial Commerce ...... 73 Conclusion ...... 93 Notes ...... 9$ List of Poems Cited ...... 107 List of Works Cited • ...... lll INTRODUCTION

In anthologies or reference books Henry Vaughan is usually classified as either a "nature poet" or a "mystic" or sometimes as a "mystical nature poet." .Much has been said on the subject of mysticism as applied to Vaughan and I do not intend to swell the already overwhelming tide of material on this subject, since I feel it is impossible con- c-lusively to demonstrate Vaughan's mysticism from his poetry. Some of the critics who feel that Vaughan completely fulfills the requirements in the definition of a mystic (which may vary with different critics) or who assume Vaughan is a mystic and, without 11 proving" his mysticism, discuss his poetry as being

11 mystical," are listed below:

Dike, Mary Elizabeth, Studies of Some English Mystical Poets in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Unpublished thesis. McGill University, 1937. Durr, Robert Allen, "Vaughan's Theme and its Pattern: 'Regeneration,'" Studies in Philology, LIV (1957), 14-28. Garnett, Richard, "Henry Vaughan," Dictionary of National Biography (re-issue), XX (1909), 164-166. Hodgson, Geraldine Emma, English Mystics. London, 1922.

------' A Study in Illumination. London, 1914.

l

. __j 2

Hughes, Helen Sard, "Night in the Poetry of Henry Vaughan,'' MOdern Language Notes, XXVIII (1913), 208-211. Husain, Itrat, The Mystical Element in the Metaphysical Poets of the Seventeenth Century. London, 1948. Lucas, Frank Laurence, iuthors Dead and Living. London, 1928.

Macdonald, George, England's Antiphon. London, Ll86~. Osmond, Percy Herbert, The Mystical Poets of the English Church. London, 1919. Paul, Frances, "Henry Vaughan," The Contemporary Review, CLXXVI (1949), 368-372. Sancourt, Robert, Outflying Philosophy: A Literary Study of the Religious Element in the Poems and Lett'ers of John Donne and in the Works of Sir Thomas Browne And of Henry Vaughan the Silurist, Together with an Account of the Interest of these' Writers in · Scholastic Philosophy, in Platonism and in Hermetic Physic, With also sorne Notes on Witchcraft. London, . 1923. Shairp, J.C., "Henry Vaughan, Silurist," The North American Review, CXXXVIII (1884), 120-137. Spurgeon, Caroline Frances Eleanor, Mysticism in English Literature. Cambridge, 1913. Thompson, Elbert N.S., "Mysticism in Seventeenth-Century English Literature," Studies in Philology, XVIII (1921), 170-2)1. Underhill, Evelyn, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man's Spirit ua!' Conscioushess. London, Ll9lY. White, Helen Constance, The Metaphysical Poets: A Study in Religious Experience. New York, 1936.

Williamson, George, The Donne Tradition':" A. Study' in' Ehglish Poetry from Donne to the Death of.'' Cowley. Cambridge, 1930. 3

However, though Vaughan may fulfill the requirements for the primary stages through which the mystic must go, I do not feel that there is any evidence that he fulfilled the last essential stages. Vaughan's impassioned cry, "O take if off!" {Cock~crowing. 47), referring to the veil which separates him from God and which is often quoted as evidence of Illumination or Union {depending on the critic's definition), does not appear to me to be a request which is ever granted. It may well be a cry desiring Illumination, but if it was granted, this is outside of the text, since none of his works appear to have been written in the rapture of Union with God. Husain claims that the three stages of the mystical experience--in his definition "the awakening of self," "purgation," and l "illumination"--can be easily traced in Vaughan's poetry. 2 · He adroits that the "unitive stage" is lacking; however, he points out that for the last thirty years of his life Vaughan was silent and therefore we have no report o.f Vaughan' s progress 3 in the Mystic Way. Husain's assumption that Vaughan was silent because his mystical progress was "incommunicable" is an explanation which, though it may satisfy the mystically minded, can hardly satisfy the scholar. Moreover, the rather unpleasant biographical facts known about the end of Vaughan's life could hardly be associated with the conclusion of a mystic's 4

4 career. Another disconcerting element in the "mystical"

critic~l material is the fact that quite frequently different critics will identify a given passage with different stages in the Mystic Way. Another stream of Vaughan criticism is that which believes Vaughan can be understood and interpreted only in relation to the Hermetic philosophy which his brother, Thomas,

studied. l~ny of the mystical critics, for instance Husain,

recognize the Hermetic influence on Vaughan and reconcile mysticism and Hermeticism with such statements as "The concept which underlies the occult sciences ••• is common 5 both to magic and mysticism." Among the most important

studies on the Hermetic influence are:

Blunden, Edmund, On the Poems of Henry Vaughan. London, 1927.

Childe, Wilfred Rowland, "Henry Vaughan," Essays by Divers Hands bein the Transactions of the Ro al Societ of Literature of the United Kingdom New Series , XXII (1945), 131-160. Clough, Wilson O., "Henry Vaughan and the Hermetic Philosophy," Publications of the Modern Language Association, XLVIII (1933), 1108-30. Holmes, Elizabeth, Henry Vaughan and the Hermetic Philosophy. Oxford, 1932.

Husain, Itrat, The !vlystical Element in 'the Metaphysicar Poets of the Seventeenth Century. London, 1948. 5

Judson, Alexander Corbin, "Cornelius Agrippa and Henry Vaughan," Modern Language Notes, XLI (1926), 178-181 • . ____, "Henry Vaughan as a Nature Poet," Publications of the MOdern Language Association, XLII (1927), 146-156. ____ , UThe Source of Henry Vaughan' s Ideas Concerning Godin Nature," Studies in Philology, XXIV (1927), 592-606. Mahood, lVIolly Maureen, Poetry and Humanism. London, 1950. Martin, Leonard Cyril, "Henry Vaughan and 'Hermes Trismegistus,'" Review of English Studies, XVIII (1942), 301-307. Sancourt, Robert, Outflying Philosophy: A Literary Study of the Religious Element in the' Poems and Letters of John Donne and in th'e Works of Sir Thomas B'rowne And Of Henry Vaughan the Silurist, Together with an Account of the Interest of these Writers in Scholastic Philosophy, in Platonism and in Hermetic Physic, With also some Notes on Witchcraft. London, 1923. Smith, Arthur J.lVl., "Some Relations between Henry Vaughan and Thomas -Vaughan," Papers of the Michigan Aéademy of Science, Arts, aad Letters, XVIII (1933), 551-561. Stewart, Bain Tate, "Hermetic Symbolism in Henry Vaughan's 'The Night; '" Philological Quarterly, XXIX (1950), 417-422. Thoma, Henry Francis, The Hermetic Strain iil Seventeenth­ Century English IVlysticism. Unpublished thesis. Havard University, 1945. Walters, Richard H., "Henry Vaughan and the Alchemists," Review ·or EBglish Studies, XXIII (1947), 107-122. Wardle, Ralph M., "Thomas Vaughan's Influence upon the Poetry of Henry · Vaughan," Publications of the M:>dern Language Association, LI (1936), 936-952. 6

White, Helen Constance, The Metaphysical Poets: A Study in Religious Experience. New York, 1936.

The influence of the Hermetic philosophy and the parallel between the ideas held by Thomas Vaughan and Henry Vaughan has been most completely and canclusively treated in Yùss Elizabeth Holmes' short book Henry Vaughan and the Hermetic Philosophy. I do not intend within the scope of this paper to trace the Hermetic influence on Henry Vaughan, but when the attitudes of the Hermetists or the esoteric meanings which they have for words or phrases will elucidate sorne point which I am discussing in Vaughan's works, I shall draw freely on this discipline. So much has been written merely to "prove" or demonstrate the Hermetic influence on Vaughan's poetry that it is refreshing, despite its limitations, to read Ross Garner's book Henry Vaughan: Experience and the Tradition (Chicago, 1959). Garner feels that undue emphasis has been placed on a Hermetic reading of Vaughan's poetry and while I feel that he underplays this influence, I agree with him that the elements of Hermetic philosophy embodied in Vaughan's works are a vehicle, sometimes a metaphor, to convey his meaning to the reader. Vaughan can

be read, understood and appreciated with only a passing reference to Hermeticism; it does not "explain" his poetic 7

thought or meaning. This paper is not a poetic appreciation of Vaughan's works. I have, through Vaughan's works, chased after ideas which emerge in a word here and a phrase there, ideas which

totalled present a rather startling revelation of what Vaughan believed. Since many of Vaughan's beliefs emerge through natural imagery and are related to nature in the widest meaning of the word, it will be necessary to discuss nature at great length.

A limitation of this paper is the neglect of those

poems dealing with the church sacraments and traditional

religious principles. Vaughan was a devout Anglican, but he was something more and it is this something more which I shall

here be discussing. CHAPTER I

Biography and Vaughan as Nature Poet

Henry Vaughan and hi~ younger twin brother Thomas were born in 1622 at Newton in Brecknockshire of a noble and ancient if somewhat impoverished Welsh family. The two brothers were taught between 1632-1638 by I~tthew Herbert and in 1640 they both went to Oxford. Thomas took his degree in theology, while Henry, since he was the eldest son and wou1d have to manage the family estate in the future, left Oxford after two years and went to London to study law. He stayed in London until he was recalled by his father at the outbreak of the civil war and, as a Royalist, he probably saw service in the war. Vaughan was deeply affected by the death of his younger brother William in 1648. He was also distressed by the Puritan victory over the Royalists and Thomas' subsequent remova1 from his religious office. Thomas returned to Oxford to pursue Hermetic studies and was never reinstated. In 1645 Vaughan began to practise as a physician in Brecknock but where and when he obtained a medical diploma ha s never been ascertained. By 1646 he settled at Newton 1 St. Bridget where he remained unti1 his death in 1695. Since Vaughan will be treated in this chapter in rel ation to one of the traditional claims ma de f or him, that 9

he was a "nature poet," I shall first examine those biographical factors which seem to have influenced him towards his obvious devotion to nature. Next we shall try to ascertain his attitude toward nature and to what degree his" use of nature is an expression of his religious sentiments. My discussion of "nature" will range from its most limited meaning, that of the landscape which can be seen in a day in the country, to nature in its widest possible meaning, as a revelation of God in His creation. Vaughan's feeling towards nature is no doubt coloured by biographical factors. The greater part of his life had been passed in surroundings which gave him ample opportunity to observe and try to understand nature. The beautiful Welsh country-side in the Valley of the River U~k is perhaps at its most diversified·where Vaughan spent his .childhood and later years and is em?odied in much of his poetry. Vaughan expresses his-admiration for the river of his ch~ldhood and gratitude for the beauty which it ·gave him:

And happy banks! whence such fafr flowres ~ave sprung, But happier thosê whete they have sate and sung! (To the River Isca. 13-14) Between 1632-1638 Henry and his twin brother Thomas Vaughan were taught by the understanding and gentle Anglican clergyman I~tthew Herbert. It is easy to see Herbert lecturing the boys on divinity within the beautiful natural surroundings, 10

using nature as a manifestation of God's divine presence. Although this may be conjecture, it is obviaus that Vaughan feels that the beauties of nature are but a "veil" through which the divinity may be seen: In the Calme Spring, when the Earth bears, And feeds on Aprils breath, and tears, His Eyes accustom'd to the skves Find here fresh objects, and like spyes Or busie Bees search the soft flowres Contemplate the green fields, and Bowres, Where he in Veyles, and shades doth see The back Parts of the Deitve. . . .· (The Praise of a Religio'u's Life.3~40l In his early manhood, Vaughan suffered disappointment and private sorrows which, in part, were due to public chaos 2 and distress. The defeat of the Royalist cause, the failure of his London hopes for studying law, the civil and religious strife which took place between 1649 and 1660 and which took its toll of Vaughan's friends must have caused Vaughan deep grief. Vaughan's hatred of city life, politicians, etc. and love of the country and peace is not, therefore, a Romantic withdrawal from society, but is justified with respect to the sociological and historical upheavals of his day. Vaughan aptly contrasts the life of the "busie worldling" in a "rude/And scornful world" with the pleasures of nature and the happiness which solitude, presumably life in the country, brings:

No busie worldling hunts away The sad Retirer all the day: Haile happy harmless solitude, 11

Our Sanctuary from the rude And scornful world: • • • • • • • • • • • Here something still like Eden looks, Hony in Woods, Julips in Brooks: And Flow'rs, whose rich, unrifled Sweets With a chast kiss the cool dew greets. (The Bee. 17-21, 23-26) The Puritan regime was an unhappy time for the Anglican Vaughan. His beloved Common Frayer Book was banned. Both lfatthew Herbert and Thomas Vaughan were removed from their religious offices. The treatment of the Anglicans aroused the righteous indignation of Vaughan and in The MOunt of Olives, which Miss Hodgson claims to be the best statement 3 of misery at the Puritan regime, Vaughan says: Considerft 0 Lord, the teares of thy Spou se which are daily upon her ~heeks, whose adversaries are grown mighty, and her enemies pro~pe~ ••• Thy Service and thy Sabbaths, thy own sacred Institutions and the pledges of thy love are denied un·to us; Thy Ministers are trodden down, and the basest of the people are set up in thy holy place. (Works, p. 166) and also: we have seen his Ministers cast out of the Sanctuary, & barbarous persons without light or perfection, usurping holy offices. (Works, p. 171) His brother Thomas and Matthew Herbert would, of course, have been in his mind here. These unhappy events in the social, religious and political age during which Vaughan lived, led him to the conclusion that life in the city amid his fellowmen, if not 12

total1y evil, was sufficiently contaminated to bring nothing but unhappiness and that: If Eden be on Earth at all, 'Tis that, which we the Country call. (Retirement. 27-2$) The p1easure which the country life affords and which is sought after in vain by the city-dwellers and courtiers is unreservedly praised by Vaughan: 0 who can ever ful1y expresse the pleasures and happinesse of the Country-life! with the various and de1ightful1 sports of fishing, hunting·and fowling, with guns, Greyhounds, Spaniels, and severa1l sorts of Nets! what oblectation and refreshment it is, to beho1d the green shades, the beauty and Majestie of the ta1l and antient groves, to be .skil1'd in planting and dressing of Orchards, Flowres and Pot-Herbs, to temper and allay these harmlesse imp1oyments with sorne innocent merry song, to ascend sometimes to the fresh and healthfull hils, to descend into the bosome of the val1eys, and the fragrant, deawy meadows, to heare the musick of birds, the murmurs of Bees, the falling of springs, and the pleasant discourses of the 01d Plough-men ••• These are the blessings which only a Countryman Li.e., a "Christian pious Countryman"7 is ordain'd to, and are in vaine wish'd for by Citizens and Courtiers. (The Praise and Ha inesse of the Country-Life Works, pp. 130-131 Fol1owing his two years at Oxford, Vaughan went to study law in London, where he lived what he considered to be a dissolute life, writing conventional secular love poetry.

A series of circumstances occurred which brought about a religious conversion after which Vaughan turned from his rather luke-warm love poetry to the religious poetry for which he is famous. One of the main causes which occasioned 13

his conversion was the fact that he suffered from a severe 4 illness with a protracted convalescence. Vaughan, in the Preface to Silex Scintillans, says:

for (indeed) 1 ~ nigh unto death, and am still at no great distance from it; which was the necessary reason for that solemn and accomplished dress, you will now finde this impression in. (Works, p. 392) Vaughan also gives credit to the poet, George Herbert, whom 5 he greatly admired, for being another influence in his religious conversion: The first, that with any effectua! success attempted a diversion of this foul and overflowing stream, [the evil influence of the "Wits'" secular vers~ was the blessed man, Mr. George Herbert, whose holy life and verse gained many pious Converts, (of whom I am the least) and gave the first check to a most flourishing and admired wit of his time. (Works, p. 391) The death of his beloved younger brother William in 1648 was perhaps another of the reasons which made Vaughan turn from a secular point of view to a religious. Vaughan seems to feel that his brother's death was in part due to his own irreligious life and, as well as a punishment, was also a warning f or him to mend his ways , for in a poem in commemoration

of William, Vaughan says: But 'twas my sinne that forc'd thy hand To cul! this Prim-rose out, That by thy early choi ce forewarn'd My soule might looke about. · (''Thou that know'st." 9-12) 14

William is also commemorated in "Come, come what doe I here?"

"Silence, and stealth of dayes!" and "I walkt the other day~" The latter poem is obviously based on a close observation of natural phenomena. Vaughan finds in the bulb living beneath the cold surface of the earth hope for the soul of his dead brother. I saw the warm Recluse alone to lie Where fresh and green He lived of us unseen. (19-21) It is important that Vaughan should see in the natural process of the planted bulb, which will spring up when it is warm, an analogy which is comforting in the time of his brother's death. The influence of Vaughan's twin brother Thomas cannet be overlooked. In fact, Thomas Vaughan's works are often quite 6 important for throwing light on his brother's thought. Anthony a Wood in the Athenae Oxoniensis described Thomas Vaughan as being "a zealous Brother of the Rosie-Crucian fraternity.n (AN. 1665). Thomas was an alchemist who wrote under the name of Eugenius Philalethes and the Hermetic views of his philosophy were no doubt communicated to and in part held by Henry Vaughan. The interest in alchemy which Thomas engendered in his brother is amply demonstrated in Vaughan's poetry as well as in translated works. Henry Vaughan translated two of the Latin works, The Hermetic Physick in 1654 and The Chymists Key in 1657, of the 15

sixteenth-century German alchemist Henry Nollius. He also translated two essays, ''Of Temperance and Patience" and "Of Life and Death-," written in Latin by the Spanish Jesuit and Hermetic philosopher, John Eusebio Nieremburg, who had lived in the earlier part of the seventeenth-century. Much of Vaughan's poetry contains the quasi-technical terms of the alchemists, such as "refine," "elixir," "magnetism" and many others. "Refinen is a word much used by Vaughan. Nan is left in sin since the fall "Till the Refiners fire breaks forth." (Ascension Hymn. 30). Here God is seen as the Supreme Alchemist. The alchemist's aim of transmutation of base metals into gold is seen as the method of cleansing sins: We, who are nothing but foul clay, Shal be fine gold, which thou didst cleanse. (White Sunday. 59-60) In discussing the death of the body Vaughan speaks of its destiny to "Re-marry to the . soule, for 'tis most plaine/ Thou only fal'st to be refin'd againe." (Resurrection and Immortality. 49-90). "Fal'st" in alchemy would be the seventh stage in the transmutat i on of base metals to gold, which was putrefaction and which was immediately followed by purification or complete refinement. In translating Nollius' Hermetic Physick Vaughan interpolates his own idea of what the aim 16

of the Hermetic philosopher should be, "Now all the knowledge of the Hermetists, proceeds from a laborious manual disquisi- tion and search into nature." (Works, p. 550). The Hermetist is one who, above all, observes nature, for it is only through copying nature and learning from her that medical cures can be effected: but I call them Hermetists, who observe nature in her workes, who imitate her, and use the same method that she doth, that out of nature, by the mediation of nature, and the assistance of their owne judgements, they may produce and bring to light such rare effectual medicines, as will safely, speedily, and pleasantly cure, and utterly expell the most deplorable diseases. (Works, p. 550) Vaughan, as a medical practitioner, followed this advice on the observation of nature in his private practice, for in a letter to his cousin Aubrey, he says: If in my attendance vpon (rather than speculations into) Nature, I can meet with any thing that may deserve the notice of that learned & Honourable Societie: I shall humblie present you with it, & leave it wholie to your Censure and disposal. (Works, p. 692) Vaughan is therefore mentally inclined towards searching nature tor knowledge and for him, as a religious poet, the knowledge would be the secrets of God and the relation-

ship between God and creation. Vaughan expresses this desire to search nature in an effort to discover God's secrets in a poem, Vanity of Spirit, which is quoted here in full, partly 17

because it was the poem which first engendered my interest in Vaughan and also because it demonstrates this aspect of Vaughan's attitude towards nature so well: Quite spent with thoughts I left my Cell, and lay Where a shrill spring tun'd to the early day. I beg'd here long, and gron'd to know Who gave the Clouds so brave a bow, Who bent the spheres, and circled in Corruption with this glorious Ring, What is his name, and how I might Descry sorne part of his great light. I summon'd nature: peirc'd through all her store, Broke up ·some seales, which none had touch'd before, Her wombe, her bosome, and her head Where all her secrets lay a bed I rifled quite, and having past Through all the Creatures, came at last To search my selfe, where I did find Traces, and sounds of a strange kind. Here of this mighty spring, I found some drills, With Ecchoes beaten from th'eternall hills; Weake beames, and fires flash'd to my sight, Like a young East, or Mbone-shine night, Which shew'd me in a nook cast by A peece of ·much antiquity, With Hyerogliphicks quite dismembred, And broken letters scarce remembred. I tooke them up, and (rouch Joy'd,) went about T'unite those peeces, hoping to find out The mystery; but this neer done, That little light I had was gone: It griev'd me rouch. At last, said I, Since in these ve ls m Eccli s'd E e May not approach thee, for at night Who can have commerce with the light?) I'le disapparell, and to buy But one half glaQnce, most gladly dye. The first eight lines of this poem are devoted to formulating the questions about God's creation of the universe, which Vaughan would like to have answered. The next eight lines là

describe the method used to discover these divine secrets, 7 which amounts to a Hermetic approach to discovering knowledge.

It is in fact a "laborious manual disquisition and search into nature." The third eight lines relate what nature revealed to the poet, "Ecchoes," "weake beames," "fires flash'd" and a "peece of rouch antiquity" with half illegible "Hyerogliphicks"-- in short, fleeting glimpses of the divine in nature. The last eight lines form a resolution between what the Hermetic approach can reward the searcher with and what man in his sinful state can comprehend. Nature can give insights into the divine secrets; it can give elues asto God 1 s purpose, but man, trammelled by his sinful body and while in the night of sin, cannot understand. The Hermetic philosophers believed that nature could provide the answers to all questions about the universe, but we can see from this poem that Vaughan finds the discipline inadequate. This is perhaps because Vaughan does not limit his use of nature in his poetry to what would à satisfy the Hermetists' definition of nature.

If by the anthology term "nature poet" it is meant that Vaughan includes in his poetry descriptions of the

"natural'' as opposed to the "city" world, then this is indisputable.

In fact, Vaughan 1 s body of poetry seems, through its natural imagery, to form a vast panorama, a landscape background against 19

which he expresses his beliefs. To Vaughan nature and religion are closely allied and it has been noted that the Psalms which he put into metre (Psalm 65, Psalm 10~ and Psalm 121) are all 9 concerned with nature.

In demonstrating Vaughan's descriptive powers I have selected two passages, one from his earlier book Olor Iscanus and one from his book of religious poems, Silex Scintillans. Sees not my friend, what a deep snow Candies our Countries wooddy brow? The yeelding branch his load scarse bears Opprest with snow, and frozen tears, While the dumb rivers slowly float, All bound up in an leie Coat. ----(ro-my worthy friend. l-6)

This is pure description. The Landscape is a picture painted only for the sake of itself and to present to the reader a view of the prospect which is seen. It is a charming, if somewhat stylized, portrait and while we can visualize the landscape which Vaughan describes, there is something rather artificial about the picture. It is a description, nothing more or less, and it is a generalized description. The "Candies" of the second line, a word which Shakespeare may use to advantage (Antony and Cleopatra, III. xiii. 165), seems less appropriate here, particularly when followed by the rather stereotyped pre-Augustan diction of "wooddy brow" for trees. The snow, the trees, the branch, the river, are not 20

sufficiently localized to be a particular description of a particular landscape. As a general description it is pretty, it is "poetic," but it lacks something. It lacks a purpose for having been described. And this is something which is rarely ever lacking in Vaughan's later poetry. All the landscape scenery in Vaughan's later poetry, and there are many natural descriptions, has a purpose for being described. "The important thing is not the picture but the stimulus and the poet's reaction w to it." The second choice of a descriptive passage is from Regeneration and for sheer descriptive beauty I think it is unparalleled in Vaughan's works: The unthrift Sunne shot vitall gold A thousand peeces, And heaven its azure did unfold Checqur'd with snowie fleeces, The aire was all in spice And every bush A garland wore; Thus fed my Eyes But all the Eare lay hush. (41-48) It is perhaps unfair to quote only this verse from a poem which, on one level, is from start to finish a description of a walk in nature, but the beauty of this verse justifies the choice, and the point I wish to make does not warrant a total inclusion of the poem. The rather surprising point to be made through this passage is that despite the beauty of the almost baroque description of nature, the natural description is not really 21

necessary at all, or at any rate is incidental to the purpose 11 of the poem. As Garner points out, the poem is an allegory. It relates Vaughan's religious conversion. The beautiful landscape description is not, however, painted solely for its descriptive beauty. If the beauty is there, it is incidental to the point of the poem, though it may be a compliment to the God who created nature, the God to whom Vaughan, in his religious regeneration, prays and praises through His visible manifestation, nature. Nature was close to Vaughan's heart and he was parti- cularly sensitive to the beautiful prospects which he saw about him and he used natural descriptions in much of his verse, but it is what he saw through, or read from nature, that is important. If Vaughan was a poet who painted verbal landscapes for us, gave us accurate and precise descriptions of natural phenomena, then I would have said that nature used him--as a mouthpiece so that it could be sketched for posterity--but I have said that Vaughan used nature in his poetry and that is precisely what he does. He uses the imagery of nature with which he is familiar time and time again in forming an analogy. I have selected one example of a natural analogy from Vaughan's early poetry and several from the poetry written after his religious conversion in order to demonstrate the difference in Vaughan's 22

use of nature imagery. The first is a charming oomparison between a flower and a princess, born in that period of civil unrest when being a member of the royal family was an uneertain pleasure: Thou seem'st a Rose-bud born in Snow, A flowre of purpose sprung to bow To headless tempests, and the rage Of an Incensed, stormie Age. (An Epitaph. 15-18) This is a pleasant comparison, prettily poetic. Vaughan compares the young girl conventionally enough to a

11 Ro se-bud, '' a flow er born to be nipped by the inclement political weather. The 11 headless tempests" are particularly apt for this age, when members of the royal household seemed likely to lose their heads in the Puritans' rise to power. Apart from being a charming and witty comparison, it is obvious that the nature imagery is included only because Vaughan's familiarity with nature can supply a suitable com- parison. Nature is used here as a convenience, not as an organic part of the poem or the essential part of the poem's expression in terms comprehensible to men. It is, in reality, little more than a conventional metaphor.

The first of the later passages I have chosen to illustrate Vaughan's use of nature imagery is also a metaphor, but, as I hope will be cl ear by the end of this paper, it is 23

also something more than a metaphor. The comparison is between the way God's servants die and the way the simple violet, in nature, dies. As harmless violets, which give Their virtues here For salves and syrups, while they live, Do after calmly disappear, And neither grieve, repine, nor fear: (Death. 21-25) The harmless violet and God's servants both gave "Their virtues here'' in whatever way they were capable of doing good for God. Vaughan was by profession a country doctor and in this age,when medical practice was not as far advanced as it now is, the "salves and syrups" made from herbs formed the bulk of the medical practitioner's cures. If this comparison were made by any other poet but Vaughan, we could pounce with delight on an analogy which was not an analogy, for how could Vaughan compare the death of a human, capable of reason and capable of knowing fear, with a flower supposedly capable of neither? This is either a false comparison or Vaughan feels plants possess human-like qualities. That the latter conjecture is correct will, I hope, be sufficiently clear by the end of this paper. T.his passage is an example of how closely related to nature Vaughan's beliefs are, and how, through implication rather than explicit statement, he communicates his beliefs to the reader. 24

Another passage which demonstrates Vaughan's use of nature imagery is this verse from Regeneration: A Ward,and still in bonds, one day I stole abroad, It was high-spring, and all the way Primros'd, and hung with shade; Yet, was it frost within, And surly winds Blasted my infant buds, and sinne Like Clouds eccli?s'd my mind. (1-$) .

In the first passage I quoted from this poem (above p. 20),

I said that the nature description was incidenta~ to the meaning. It was merely a delightful description of an analogous state and in this passage the analogy is more clearly seen through the natural imagery. The beauty of the "high-spring" landscape is used as a contrast to the winter state of sin within. The "surly winds" are descriptive of that which is bad both within nature and in the poet, no doubt symbolizing his rebellious, irreligious attitude towards God. The "infant buds" of early spring are symbolic of the good which is in the poet; either sorne vestige of the innate good with which the individual enters the world, or the religious training he received during his lifetime. Very similar to this verse

is a passage from Unprofitablenes~ 'Twas but Just now my bleak leaves hopeles hung Sullyed with dust and mud; Each snarling blast shot through me, and did share Their Youth, and beauty, Cold showres nipt, and wrung Their spiciness, and bloud; (2-6) 25

Vaughan is again borrowing from the landscape which surrounds him images which will adequately describe his emotional state. The last leaves of autumn, splattered with mud, torn at and deprived of the green vigour which was theirs in spring and summer by the cold winter wind is to Vaughan a perfect visual counterpart of the state of the Christian soul when sinful. Just as Vaughan uses nature symbolically to express his state of sin, so also does he use nature imagery to express his religious ecstasy, to describe the Christian soul when, after having returned to God, it is re-instated in divine grace: with what flowres, And shoots of glory, my soul breakes, and buds! (The MOrning-watch. 1-2) God the Creator is descr±bed, not as being the ruler of cities and kingdoms, but as "The prince of flowres/Which thrives in storms, and smels best after showres" (Rules and Lassons. 59-60). And that state of blessedness to which God's servants are admitted is also described in terms of a natural landscape: 0 that I were winged and free And quite undrest just now with thee, Where freed souls dwel by living fountains On everlasting, spicy mountains! (~Fair and yong light!"' 47-50)

Vaughan desires to reach this state of blessedness "where all 26

is light, and flowers, and fruit/And 12z, and rest," (Tears. 5-6). Religion is described by Vaughan as a clear woodland spring "That from sorne secret, golden l~ne/Derives her birth~ (Religion, 29-30) and which is only polluted when it is dabbled in by man. But Vaughan's devotion to nature is obviously much deeper than would be required for what is merely a convenient analogy. To Vaughan nature, since it was created by God, is a manifestation of God and it is therefore possible through nature to catch sorne fleeting glimpses of the divine: When on sorne gilded Cloud, or flowre My gazing soul would dwell an heure, And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity; (The Retreate. 11-14) God, to Vaughan, is not the divinity who dwells in regal mansions of gold and marble, nor, it is implied, need He even dwell in churches. (The "mercy-seat of gold," "dead and dusty Cherub," "carv'd stone" are all reminiscent of a medieval cathedral). God is manifest in His creation and in the God-created natural world He can be seen and worshipped: No mercy-seat of gold, No dead and dusty Cherub, nor carv'd stone, But his own living works did my Lord hold And lodge alone; (The Night. 19-22) Because nature is a manifestation of the divine, Vaughan 27

advises the reader to "highten thy Devotions" through the observation of "Godin his works," that is in God's creation, nature. Nature, therefore, may be a moral guide as well as a religious inspiration to man: To highten thy Devotions, and keep low All mutinous thoughts, what busines e'r thou hast Observe God in his works; here fountains flow, Birds sing, Beasts feed, Fish leap, and th'Earth stands fast; Above are restles motions, running Lights, Vast Circling Azure, giddy Clouds, days, nights. When Seasons change, then lay before thine Eys His wondrous Method; mark the various Scenes In heav'n; Hail, Thunder, Rain-bows, Snow, and Ice, Calmes, ·Tempests, Light, and darknes by his means; Thou canst not misse his Praise; Each ~' herb, flowre Are shadows of his wisedome, and his Pow'r. (Rules and Lessons. 85-96) Since nature is a manifestation of the divine·, Vaughan feels he is justified in observing in great detail all God's creatures within nature. In his poem dedicated to the bird, Vaughan shows great understanding and sympathy towards this little creature who earns God's tenderness and protection: Hither thou com'st: the busie wind all night Blew through thy lodging, where thy own warm wing Thy. . pillow. . . .was...... And now as fresh and chearful as the light Thy little heart in early hymns doth sing Unto that Providence, whose unseen arm Curb'd them, and cloath'd thee well and warm. (The Bird. l-3, 7-10) If the bird is part of creation, the tree is also, and Vaughan shows the most amazing understanding of and sympathy towards the dead tree. Bethel feels that The Timber is Vaughan's 12 "most surprising poem" and that in this poem he demonstrates a "strange capacity for feeling his way into the life of a 13 tree." With love born of sympathy Vaughan views the tree that had once flourished and thinks with tenderness of the birds which built their nests in the branches. He even includes 14 the 11 low Violet" which grew at the tree's roots in his descrip- tion: Sure thou didst flourish once! and many Springs, Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers Past ore thy head: many light Hearts and Wings Which now are dead, lodg'd in thy living bowers. And still a new succession sings and flies; Fresh Groves grow up, and their green branches shoot Towards the old and still enduring skies, While the low Violet thrives at their root. (The Timber. l-e) Nature, Vaughan feels, not only resembles the heavenly blessed state, but provides an earthly state of happiness and a legacy of good: Fair, solitary path! Whose blessed shades The old, white Prophets planted first and drest: Leaving for us (whose goodness quickly fades,) A shelter all the way, and bowers to rest. (Righteousness. 1-4) Through nature one can still feel sorne contact with the ancient good which previously was on earth before man's fall: 29

My God, when I walke in those groves, And leaves thy spirit doth still fan, I see in each shade that there growes An Angell talking with a man. Under a Juniper, sorne house, Or the coole ~lirtles canopie, Others beneath an Oakes greene boughs, Or at sorne fountaines bubling Eye; (Religion. 1-8) God cares for nature and extends a protective power over nature through Christ: 0 quickning showers Of my Lords blood You make rocks bud And crown dry hils with wells & flowers! (The Feast. 51-54)

In gratitude for the care, protection and loving kindness that God shows for creation, the whole creation replies with a universal pràise and prayer to God who is within, yet above nature: heark! In what Rings, And Hymning Circulations the quick world Awakes, and sings; The rising winds, And falling springs, Birds, beasts, all things Adore him in their kinds. Thus all is hurl'd In sacred Hymnes, and Order, The great Chime And Symphony of nature. Prayer is The world in tune, A spirit-voyce, And vocall joyes Whose Eccho is heav'ns blisse. (The MOrning-watch. 9-22) 30

As we conclude this chapter in the crescendo of a universal praise from an apparently animate world, it should be clear that Vaughan is not just a "nature poet," but a religious poet who sings of the indwelling of God in nature. CHAPTER II

The E~ernal Life and Light Symbolism

Vaughan's concept of the created universe is one that is all inclusive. God created the universe. All creation is, and is because created by God. God gave to creation the ability to exist and everything that is exists because of the presence of God's divine lif.e spark. The function and properties of what I have called the divine life spark will be examined in this chapter. In defe.nce of my use of the term "divine life spark" it is helpful to notice Vaughan's own definition of the soul-­ a "Divine Spark, which God hath shut up in Vessels of Clay." {Of Temperance and Patience /Works, p. 25Q7) and it is this which confers life. It seems to be a disputed point as to whether 1 Vaughan's belief in a pre-natal existence is Platonic or not. This is a point which has in the past and no doubt will in the future continue to be debated. The one fact which is indisputable is that Vaughan does accept the doctrine of a pre-natal existence. In The Retreate Vaughan states poetically his belief

31 32

in a pre-natal existence, this present life being to him a "second race" (4). It is important to understand that the happiness which Vaughan contemplates in The Retreate and in

Childe-hood is not merely joy at the irresponsibility of infancy, but exists because of the closeness to the bliss that was his before birth. These poems are, therefore, not examples of a 2 withdrawal from and abandorunent · of 11 the historical concrete" and 3 a subsequent "flight into the golden childhood garden."

The "Soul" or life of each object in nature possesses a previous existence of which it is conscious and, since the soul before being born into this world is closer to the divine life source, Vaughan pictures the soul of man as having been used to the "spangled Zodiacks firie way" (Boethius A. à) and possessing the full knowledge of the "Cause and Mysterie" (28) of "What spirit wheeles th'harmonious world" (20), while, in the human body, the soul is:

Chain 1 d about With outward Cares, whose peh3ive weight Sinks down her Eyes from their first height, And clean Contrary to her birth Poares on this vile and foolish Earth. (30-34)

In Of Life and Death Vaughan states that 11 The pure and eternal Soul is tyed to the putrid and wasting carkasse."

(Works, p. 278). It is therefore quite understandable that the 33

souls, consciously in a state of bliss, should be described by Vaughan as complaining bitterly at having to enter the body at birth.

The souls, in their pre-natal existence, possess a common soul source: All sorts of men, that live on Earth, Have one beginning and one birth. (Boethius E, l-2)

This common source is God "the great Progenitor" who confers on man "Souls of divine seed." (12).

The soul, in its pre-natal existence, is part of this life source. It leaves the source to realize its visible existence on earth and, at the termination of its morta! existence, returns to the life source.

He /Jaughai/ believed that true life spanned all eternity,.. save for the interruption of earthly existence. The soul's purity was obscured upon its arriva! in the body and returned to its pristine state only when God received it again into his favor.4

As a child, Vaughan says in The Retreate, he was still able to feel "through all this fleshly dresse/Bright shootes of everlastingnesse" (19-20). The breath of life is, almost as in the Hindu religion, a constant, everlasting process, something which remains within our corporal bodies

(fleshly dresse) only for the duration of our lives on earth.

At the end of The Retreate Vaughan seems to equate birth and 34

dea th: Sorne men a forward motion love, But I by backward steps would move, And when this dust falls to the urn In that state I came return. (29-32) It is possible to get to the essential state either way, the only difference being one of direction. Vaughan further elaborates the life process in

Resurrection and Immortality:

Unbowel'd nature, shew'd thee her recruits, And Change of suits And how of death we make A meere mistake, For no thing can to Nothing fall, but still Incorporates by skill, And then returns, and from the wombe of things Such treasure brings As Phenix-like renew 1 th Both life, and youth; For a preserving spirit doth still passe Untainted through this Masse, Which doth resolve, produce, and ripen all That to it fall; Nor are those births which we Thus suffering see Destroy'd at all; But when times restles wave Their substance doth deprave And the more noble Essence finds his house Sickly, and loose, He, ever young, doth wing Unto that spring, And source of spirits, where he takes his lot Till time no more shall rot His passive Cottage. • • (21-45) This poem is a dialogue between soul and body and here the 35

soul is replying to the body, refuting the mortality of both a ''drowsie silk-worme" and man, the parallel being of course that as the silk worm's sleep is not a death but a prelude to a higher more beautiful existence, so man's sleep, death, is certainly not an end. In describing the eternal life process Vaughan states that the view of death as being a termination of existence is "A meere mistake" since "No thing can to nothing fall," that is, nothing can die. The soul "returns" to the original life source and "from the wombe of things/Such treasures brings ••• " Having returned to the life source, the soul is now coming back

"from" there into mortal existence with renewed life and youth. The Phoenix is, of course, a traditional symbol of immortality or perhaps better the possessor of an eternal life which goes through a nominal death by being consumed by fire only to rise 5 again from its ashes with renewed life and youth. The "preserving spirit," which is the individual portion of the eternal life process, passes "untaintsed" through the body, although it is the body's cause. The "noble Essence" is of course the body's portion of the divine life which, when loosed from the sickly body in which it is housed, returns rapidly and with joy to the ''source of spirits." The"noble

Essence" is described as being "ever young," since it is a 36

part of the eternal life and cannot rot with his "passive Co tt age" or body. There are two and one half lines in the passage quoted above which can fruitfully bear closer analysis in demonstrating the function of the eternal life:

Nor are those births which we Thus suffering see Destroy'd at all •••

These lines, I think, substantiate the interpretation given to the end of The Retreate. In the first line Vaughan refers to "birth," in the second line he uses the word "suffering." Birth does entail suffering, but only to the one giving birth and then only temporarily. But Vaughan is making the onlooker the one who suffers. It is while watching the death, not birth, of a loved one that the onlooker suffers. In the last line he uses the word "Destroy'd" which would imply death.

What I think ~aughan is actually saying is that in deigning , through birth, to enter mortal existence, the l ife substance or soul is not being "Destroy'd," that is, not dying. In short, birth is not death, which is to say the least a most unconventional ly pa radoxical statement and which,I feel, is intended to prove that the life source, entering natural existence, is not s uffering a change in its substance any more than it does at death when i t departs. Th e two are 37

merely an entrance and exit through which the same unaltered divine life-stuff passes in a circular and unending path. This paradox of life and death is also used by Vaughan in Of Life and Death where he states:

Life then is the death of the Soule, and the life of the body: But death is the life of the Soule, and the death of the body. {Works, p. 305) The soul is necessary for life in the body, but its residence in the body is a restriction which, since it entails a departure from the divine into the mundane, is also tanta- mount to a death. However, there is no essential change in the essence of the life stuff since the death of the body releases the soul back into the glories of the ever- lasting life.

It is interesting to note that the death which is the necessary termination of life on earth is to Vaughan not the first, but the second death: Know, when time stops that posthume breath, You must endure a second death. {Boethius G. 23-24) The first "death" is no doubt birth. Though the soul is anxious to return to the joys of the divine life source, it is never completely out of touch with the source, for Vaughan says in one of his prose 38

works: One benefit more shee Lthe sou17 hath by Patience, that though shut up in the body, yet shee can have a tast of her glorious posthume liberty. Death looseth the Soule from the body, it breaks in sunder the secret bonds of the blood, that she may have the full use of her wings, and be united to Divinity. {Of Temperance and Patience) /Works, p. 25rj/) In describing the immortality of the soul, Vaughan resorts to natural phenomena, as he does in Resurrection and 6 Immortality, to make an elucidating analogy:

Do not we see divers birds of this regiment such as are commonly known to us, with other meaner Creatures as silk­ worms and the humble-bee, which yet are not so contemptible, but they may serve us for noble instances in this pQint, seeing there is in them a living spirit ••• these birds and inferieur creatures ••• do on a sudden leave us, and all winter-long suffer a kind of dêath, and with the Suns warmth in the youth of the year awake again, and refresh the world with their reviv'd notes? (The I~unt of Olives ZWorks, p.l717)

Just as the 11 meaner Creatures" suffer what appears to be a

"kind of death" but is in reality only a short silence before they are "reviv'd," so also man is subject to a "kind of death" with subsequent revival. It is interesting to note that even the meaner creatures have their portion of the divine life spark--"seeing there is in them a living spirit."

The life process is a cycle which is never-ending.

Our bodies are but temporary abiding places for the life spark and Vaughan uses this belief in demonstrating the 39

futility of the statesmari's life: Chameleons of state, Aire-monging band, Whose breath (like Gun-powder) blowes up a land, Come see your dissolution, and weigh What a loath'd nothing you shall be one day, As th'Elements by Circulation passe From one to th'other, and that which first was Is so again, so 'tis with you; The grave And Nature but Complott, what the one gave The other takes. • • (The Charnel-house. 21-29) Nature, the mother, gives the body, which the grave later takes as the "Elements by Circulation passe/From one to th'other" and we but return to "that which first was." In a further elucidation of the cycle of life Vaughan forms another analogy from nature between the water in its course and the soul within its body for the course of its life. In his description of the waterfall Vaughan observes:

The common pass Where, clear as glass, All must descend Not to an end: But quickned by this deep and rocky grave, Rise to a longer course more bright and brave. Dear stream! dear bank, where often I Have sate, and pleas'd my pensive eye, Why, since each drop of thy quick store Runs thither, whence it flow'd before, Should poor souls fear a shade or night, Who came (sure) from a sea of light? Or since those drops are all sent back So sure to thee, that none doth lack, Why should frail flesh doubt any more That what God takes, hee'l not restore? (The Water-fall. 7-22) 40

In this Wordsworthian rhapsody of the natural analogy, Vaughan states that the final descent is "Not to an end" but that the soul will arise from the 11 rocky grave" to a ''longer course more bright and brave." The stream is returning, it should be noted, to "whence it flow'd before," that is to its original source just as the soul will return to the original source from which it came and which is here described by Vaughan as being "a sea of light." It is the knowledge of the return to the source which occurs at the end of mortal existence which makes the hardships of this world more bearable to Vaughan:

It matters not, wee shall one day obtain Our native and Celestiall scope again. (To his friend. 67-6$) The fact that the "Celestiall scope" is "native" would mean that we not only originate there but we will return to it and that our sojourn in the terrestrial sphere is a stay in what really is an alien land. Vaughan's use of the word "again" makes it obvious that we are returning from whence we came. Vaughan' s concept of the eternal life gives him ample opportunity to contemplate the insignificance of mortal existence. Against the incomprehensible infinitude of the eternal life , his present lif e is to Vaughan a mere "apparition." Truly, when I consider, how I came first into this world, and in what condition I must once again go out of it, and compare my appointed time here with the portion preceding it, and the eternity to follow, I can conclude my present being or state (in respect of the time) to be nothing else but an apparition. (Man in Darkness /Works, p. 16~) Corruption goes on to enlarge on Vaughan's life philosophy. In the early days before man's fall to corruption,

1 man "Had sorne glimpse of his birth ' (his pre-natal existence).(4).

He knew the place from which he came, was conscious of his existence here and the fact that this existence was less beautiful and more laborious than the last, and he looked forward to the return to the t+essed state, after death, from which he came.

It is the presence of God within His creation which gives existence to all His creatures, for God it is "whose spirit feeds/All things with life" (The Stone. 26-27). It is also the presence of God, or this essential life-conferring portion of God, which, even while within the body, strives to return to the divine life source. In The Palm-tree, Vaughan observes that even though the palm tree is bent, it will still grow and the reason for this is that 11 Celestial natures still/Aspire for home" (9-10).

The divine life spark within the palm tree still desires to 42

return to the life source, and of the life that the pa1m tree possesses,Vaughan further says: This is the life which hid above with Christ In God, doth always (hidden) mu1tip1y, And spring, and grow ••• (13-15) The terrestrial counterpart of the divine star is filled with "a restless, pure desire/And longing for thy bright and vita11 fire" (The Starre. 17-18), the desire to return to the vital fire of the divine 1ife spark. As in the terrestrial counterpart of the star, the divine spark within man, while here on earth, is fil1ed with the earnest desire to return to its divine source:

Thus all things long for their first State, And glad1y to't return, though 1ate. Nor is there here to any thing A Course a1low'd, but in a Ring; Which, where it first began, must end: And to that Point direct1y tend. (Boethius B. 43-48) The fact that the longing is for the "first State" would, of course, reiterate the belief in the pre-existence of the life- stuff. The "Course" which the life-stuff runs is in a "Ring" and the circular process of life is never ending. Vaughan often, and aptly, uses t he Ring to symbolize eternity or the eternal lif e process. The symbol is particu1arly appropriate since both the ring and the eternal life have neither a beginning or an end and both are circular in form. With our knowledge of Vaughan's conception of the eternal life we have a better understanding of what he means when he says casually:

I saw Eternity the other night Like a great Ring of pure and endless light, All calm, as it was bright. (The World. 1-3) Eternity is to Vaughan the eternal life. It is ringlike in shape--life before birth, life after birth, life after death, which is the same as life before birth--and it is endless. The divine life spark, which flows through all created matter linking all creatures together and them to

God in an eternal cyclical process, is seen as a "pure and endless light." The ring, the divine source of life, is the sole property of the Godhead: "This Ring the Bride-groome did 7 for none provide/But for his bride" (59-60). The relationship of time to eternity is shown by

Vaughan in his poem The Agreement: But while time runs, and after it Eternity, which never ends ••• (49-50) "Time" is the span on earth which the life-stuff spends, but at death the life-stuff returns to the source, which is . à "Eternity" and which "never ends'' since it is circular. We have seen the function of the eternal life process and before we discuss the properties of the eternal

life it will be helpful to return to Vaughan's definition of the soul as being a "Divine Spark, which God hath shut up in Vessels of Clay." The key word in the definition which leads us on to the properties of the divine life itself is the word "Spark. 11 A spark could be described as a minute portion of light and light is the most important property of the divine life. "And I pray," says Vaughan in 'Ehe Ivbunt of Olives, 11 are not light and life compatriots?" {Works, pp. 176-177). Light symbolism abounds in Vaughan's poetry and a full discussion of Vaughan's use of the word could easily constitute a volume in itself. I will, within this paper, limit my discussion to the more important quotations in which light occurs and more specifically to those quota- tions which refer to the eternal life or the Dei ty as the source of that light. Other characteristics of the eternal life as described by Vaughan are those of supreme purity and, in connection with light, of radiance and heat. Vaughan is probably influenced by the Hermetic idea that God is light 9 and heat and f ire. Another characteristic, which has already been amply demonstrated, is the unchangœ.bility of 45.

the essence of the divine life. Magnetism, another property of the eternal life which is very important in its terrestrial effects, will be discussed at greater length in Chapter IV to which is is more properly related. When we have fully discussed the function and the properties of the eternal life, the effects of this divine or celestial life on terrestrial beings will be examined and this, in the main, constitutes the balance of the paper. Light is an important word to Vaughan and usually symbolizes the eternal life: "play not away/Thy glimpse of light" he warns the dissolute individual (The Check. 23-24). God is the light-source and "Gods Saints are shining lights"

(~oy of my life!" 17). Those dear friends of Vaughan's who have died have "all gone into the world of light!" {"They are all gone." 1). For his mere existence man wants light, which, however, is independant and above man; "light, which no wants doth know!" (The Recovery. 15). There is nothing passive about the divine light for religious beauty is described as being ''Active as light" (Mount of Olives /Works, p. 47§/). Vaughan refers to man's soul as being simultaneously

God's spirit and a sacred ray: Lord, since thou didst in this vile Clay That sacred Ray Thy spirit plant, quickning the who+e With that one grains Infused wealth. • • (Repentance. 1-4) The image of the soul as being a portion of light sown by God in the human body is also used by Vaughan in Disorder and frailty:

O, is! but give wings to my fire, And hatch my soul, untill it fly Up where thou art, amongst thy tire Of Stars, above Infirmity; Let not perverse, And foolish thoughts adde to my Bil Of forward sins, and Kil That seed, which thou In me didst sow ••• (46-54) It is the active light of the seed-soul which animates the

body: "Thus aoules their bodies animate" (The Holy Communion.

5) •

The soul is, to Vaughan, composed of light. However, on its entry into the body at birth: "that light is almost out,/

And the brave Soule lyes Chain'd about'' (Boethius A. 29-30).

"Transplanted" here on earth, man is "Cast/Here under Clouds" (Mans fall. l-2). Vaughan thinks with sorrow of what he has

lost: Besides I've lost A traine of lights, which in those Sun-shine dayes Were my sure guides. • • (9-ll)

Despite the similarity in phraseology to Wordsworth's Intimations

Ode, the poem should not be taken as a Wordsworthian'back to 10 childhood'theme in Vaughan. "Those Sun-shine dayes" are quite clearly those before man's being "transplanted" here on earth and subsequent to his fall through sin, when he was in close communion with the divine and at which time he possessed the ability to see God in his ultimate essence, light. Christ is also described in terms of light and His stay on earth as a hiding of the light. In two exceedingly beautiful !ines Vaughan describes how Christ, to be on earth, was forced:

To put on Clouds instead of light, And cloath the morning-starre with dust. (The Incarnation. 5-6) Stars, as pertaining to light, also symbolize the eternal life. Each natural object has a sou!, its little bit, its allotted portion of the eternal ring of !ife, and this gives it existence: For each inclosed Spirit is a star Inlightning his own little sphaere, '~ho se light, • • • /Ya.i} fetcht and borrowed from far. • • (The Bird. 19-21)

Vaughan further describes the soul as a star in

The Morning-watch: The Pious soul by night Is like a clouded starre, whose beames though sed To shed their light Under sorne Cloud Yet are above, And shine, and move Beyond that mistie shrowd. So in my Bed That Curtain'd grave, though sleep, like ashes, hide ~ lamp, and life, bath shall in thee abide. (24-34) The star-soul is clouded by "that mistie shrowd," the body.

In "They are all gone into the world of light!"

the soul is a star which, since it is in the body, is "confin'd

into a Tomb" (29). When it is released, it will "shine through all the sphaere" (32). Disgusted with the body that contains

this "star,'' Vaughan asks the Spirit to shed his grace "to

make man all pure love, - flesh a star!/ A star that would ne'r set" (Love-sick. 4-5). In Quickness, Vaughan attempts a definition of life,

the life which is God-given, and never-ending: Life is a fix'd, discerning light, A knowing Joy; No change, or fit: but ever bright. • • (9-11)

Life as an eternal light, and 11 ever bright" because eternal, possesses the "knowing Joy'' or knowledge of the Deity. In making the distinction between life or soul and the body which the life temporarily inhabits, Vaughan gives that metaphysical, but beautifully playful, definition of body and life:

Thou art a toylsom MOle, or less A moving mist 49

But life is, what none can express, A guickness, which my God hath kist. (17-20)

The "toy1som Mlle," our body, is given the great insult of being 1ikened to a mist, which, of course, would deflect the intensity and brightness of light, while giving the impres- sion of insecurity and instability in a groping fog-like way. Perhaps none can define the eternal life, but I have yet to see a more beautifu1 attempt than "A guickness, which my God 11 ha th kist." Since mists deflect light, they are often used by Vaughan to designate the bodily or sinfu1 part of man. In The Garland sins are seen as "gi1ded mists" (17) and in

Death Vaughan says that 11 Mists make but triumphs for the day" (20). The sins of the body, which might dark8n the 1ight of the sou1 are also seen as mist:

Should mist within me, and put out that lamp Thy spirit feeds; (The Re:bapse. 15-16) It is shown later in the poem that virtue earns "eterna1 beams" ( 27) •

Both "clouds" .and "vei1s," as well as mists, act so as to decrease the brightness of 1ight. "C1ouds" Vaughan general1y uses to designate sin on the part of the individual-­ "sinne/Like Clouds ecc1ips'd my mind" {Regeneration. 7-S). He further states of the soul who has "lost her light": 0 in what haste with Clouds and Night Ecclyps'd, and having lost her light, The dull Soule whom distraction rends Into outward Darkness tends! How often (by these mists made blind,) Have earthly cares opprest the mind! (Boethius A. · 1~6)

The "dull Soule," in both senses of the adjective use~ is blinded by mists, or mortal sins, which make it lose the divine light. 12 "Veils" or "Curtains" on the other hand are drawn between the Deity and the individual during his mortal existence, since the life-light would be too strong to be viewed by the mortal, as in Childe-hood: ''my striving eye/ Dazles at it, as at eternity" (1-2). MOrtal existence is described as being "linder veyls here" (The Feast. 40). In

Cock-crowing: This veyle, I say, is all the cloke And cloud which shadows thee from me. This veyle thy full-ey'd love denies, And onely gleams and fractions spies. 09-42)

Vaughan continues with the prayer ''0 take it off!" (43) and "brush me with thy light" (44). The body as a curtain through which the divinity cannet be seen is used by Vaughan in his poem Death. A Dialogue: 5!l.

l'le wish my Curtaines off to free Me from so darke, and sad a bed; A neast of nights, a gloomie sphere, Where shadowes thicken, and the Cloud Sits on the Suns brow all the yeare, And nothing moves without a shrowd; (9-14) It is not until death that: we saw the Clouds to crack And in those Cranies light appear'd •• ( 23-24) In The day of Judgement it is time, the days in between the present and. the end, that act as a veil between mortality and glory: All other days, compar'd to thee, Are but lights weak minority, They are but veils, and Cypers drawn Like Clouds, before thy glorious dawn. (7-10)

This is the universal 11 breaking" of the veil to allow all creation to see the light. The individual tearing of the veil occurs at death, or the end of this mortal existence, when the individual returns to the light source: But that great darkness at thy death When the veyl broke with thy last breath. • • (The Holy Communion. 21-22)

Then he is admitted to the 11 everlasting light" (32). Vaughan's desire to see the light makes him anxious even to die:

Since in the se veyls my Ecclips'd Eve May not approa ch thee, (for at night 52

Who can have commerce with the light?) l'le disapparell, and to buy But one half glaunce, most gladly dye. (Vanity of Spirit. 30~l4)

We cannot adequately or correctly understand the world picture which Vaughan paints without being aware that the created world is God-permeated. The "everlasting light" which is the essence of life flows through the whole creation and gives it being. Not only man, but sub-human and even inanimate matter possesses a portion of God's creative life- light. Through the possession of this soul-stuff, man has traditionally been felt to have intelligence, rationality, and an understanding of and duty towards God. What then will be the affects on sub-human creation which also possesses a portion of this soul-stuff? Fortunately Vaughan does not leave us to conjecture but informs us about the active capabilities of the created world which is lower than man. CHAPTER III

Intelligence and Bentience on the Part of Sub-Human and Inanimate Matter.

As we have seen, the eternal life spark permeates all created matter, be it animate or inanimate. Sorne of the implications of this belief lead to statements which may well be termed, in Vaughan's phrase, "rare Doctrine" (To his Learned Friend. 22). They are, at any rate, far from orthodox Christian doctrine. One which emerges from Vaughan's philosophy of the omnipresence of the divine life would imply that sub- human life is capable of intelligence. There's not a Spring, Or Leafe but hath his MOrning-hymn; Each Bush And -Oak doth know I AM ••• - -- (Rules and Lessons. 14-16} It is not usual for the Christian to attribute to springs or plants the possession of or the ability to possess knowledge, but a possible explanation is given further on in the same poem:

Each tree~ herb, flowre Are shadows of his wisedome, and his Pow'r. (95-96) The fact that plant life is merely a "shadow" of the divine wisdom would perhaps be adequate in explaining the possession of knowledge. However, in the rest of Vaughan's works he says nothing which would imply that the knowledge which ·sub-human life possesses is merely a reflected wisdom from the divinity. He further . sta~es that in the days of -~ ,, __ ., ..- .1; .... ~ 1.. 11\ --:P:...~~ · ,f.: ·1 primordial innocence, when angels were on earth, plant life was capable of personal knowledge and familiarity with them: Angels lay Leiger here; Each Bush, and Cel, . Each Oke, and hi~h-way knew them ••• (Corruption. 25-26)

It would appear Vaughan believes that an absolute ability to possess knowledge and utilize it in an intelligent manner is conferred upon sub-human matter. Even the lowly herb, in some respects, has greater knowledge than man, for Vaughan says "th'herb he {mai/ treads knows much, rouch more" (The Constellation.2$). Here it is obvious that in sorne aspects of life, for reasons which will be discussed later, sub-human life may possess more knowledge than man. Not only does man possess, in sorne instances, less knowledge than lower life, but he is also capable of being "taught obedience by thy whole Creation" (55), the whole creation including sub-human matter. The knowledge which sub-human life possesses is not a general knowledge but a specifie knowledge which is limited to things of the deity or what by divine decree it concerns the lower life to know. In Vaughan's belief, the terrestrial herb has for its celestial counterpart a star. The star is, therefore, intelligible to the herb and Vaughan quite explicitly states that the herb is capable of knowing which star is its counterpart: Some kinde herbs here, though low & far, Watch for, and know their loving star. (The Favour. 7-8) The fact that sub-human matter is capable of knowledge, particularly as pertains to the divine, is a belief which Vaughan accepts and it would even seem that

Vaughan feels that to trees and herbs were given a greater realization of the coming of Christ than to humans: Where trees and herbs did watch and peep And wonder, while the Jews did sleep. (The Night. 23-24v The possession of knowledge could possibly be called a fairly passive process. If it is presented gratis by the deity then it could be possessed by the recipient without any necessary active participation. However, sub-human life is not merely limited to a passive possession of knowledge. Vaughan also invests sub-human life with "sense" or an intelligence which seems to imply a process of almost logical reasoning, in the possession of which sub-human life becomes an actively intelligent and reasoning being. Such creatures as herbs and fowls are seen to have a "sense" which enables them to watch for the sun. Absents within the Line Conspire, and Sense Things distant doth unite, Herbs sleep unto the East, and sorne fowles thence Watch the Returns of light; ("Sure, there's a tye." 9-12} They know where the sun is; they know it is a light- source of the divinity and therefore at the appearance of the sun, all of natural life responds in a "sensible" manner and duly gives human-like praise to God: When in the East the Dawn doth blush, Here cool, fresh Spirits the air brush; Herbs (strait) get up~ Flow'rs peep and spread: Trees whisper praise, and bow the head. Birds from the shades of night releast Look round ab~ut, then quit the naast, And with united gladness sing The glory of the morning's King. (The Bee. 35-42) Plant and animal life possess a spiritual realization equal to man's, for in Providence birds are shown to have cognizance of the doctrine of Christ's beneficence and with the herbs return their gratitude to the divinity: Poorbirds this doctrine sing, And herbs which on dry hills do spring Or in the howling wilderness Do know thy dewy morning-hours, And watch all night for mists or showers, Then drink and praise thy bounteousness. (25-30) God has not created the world for its own gratifi- cation but with a specifie purpose in mind. In return for His love and care and for the very act of creation, He expects on the part of His creatures obedience, duty, praise and love. Man owes this obligation to God and so does sub- human life, for Vaughan feels that "all things," including sub-human matter, havea definite mandate from the divinity and is capable of fulfilling it. Yet, seeing all things that subsist and be, Have their Commissions from Divinitie, And teach us duty, I will see What man may learn from thee. (The Starre. 9-12) In sorne respects inanimate or sub-human matter is superior. to man. One respect in which it demonstrates its superiority is in its constancy. Objects in nature or natural phenomena obey their divine commissions with greater truth and more constancy than does giddy, variable man. Hadst thou Made me a starre, a pearle, or a rain-bow, The beames I then had shot My light had lessend not, But now I find my selfe the lesse, the more I grow. • • (Distraction. 5-10) The difference seems to be one of free will. As Leishman says:

Vaughan ••• believed that the world was the manifestation of a divine spirit, was penetrated by that spirit, but that while animals and plants and inanimate things always instinctively, naturally, inevitably obeyed the laws and motions of that spirit, man alone, having the power of choice or free will, was able to resist these motions and laws. ·1 ·

Leishman states that sub-human matter "instinctively, naturally, inevitably" obeyed God's laws; however, he neglects to add that this task was also performed with reason and intelligence, for Vaughan specifically attributes "Intelligence" (The Stone. 25) to sub-human life. It is reason and intelligence which_ traditionally raiseè man above animals and gives hic the opportunity to exercise his will. In exercising his free will man is described in Vaughan's poetry as almost invariably erring. Since sub-human life also possesses reason it would seem logical to assume that they should also be able to exercise sorne measure of freedom of choice. I can find . . no explicit example of this in Vaughan, although it is perhaps suggested in "And do they so?": Thy other Creatures in this Scene Thee only aym, and mean; Sorne rise to seek thee, and with heads Erect peep from their beds. • • (23-26)

This passage perhaps implies a certain degree of active choice in seeking out the deity. The difference between man and the

"other Creatures" is that whereas man, through reason, sins, 59

sub-human life remains constant. Man's sinfulness as

opposed to the steadfastness of the '~other Creatures" therefore forms a more tragic contrast than would be implied in sub- human life's instinctive' obedience to God. Perhaps this is the reason for Vaughan's pessimism and optimism, which Garner attempts to reconcile in his book, Henry Vaughan: Experience and the Tradition. However, sub-human life is not capable only of

knowing, but also of possessing human-like emotions. In The Timber Vaughan tells us"what it feels like to be a block - 2 of wood." The tree, which is now dead, is seen to have been, during its life time, capable of loves and hates. Even when the tree is dead, its old fear and hatred for the storm exists and the tree can also tell when its old enemy, the storm, will come: And yet (as if sorne deep hate and dissent, Bred in thy growth betwixt high winds and thee, Were still alive) thou dost great storms resent Before they come, and know'st how near they be. (13-16) This poem demonstrates the curious theory of Resentience, according to which the corpse of a murdered man ;retains a

knowledge of its murderer which will make the blood flow

when the murderer approa ches the body. The dead tree, on 60

the approach of high winds will show a resentment against 3 "those, who broke (in life) thy peace" (20). We have seen that to Vaughan the human being possesaes a pre-natal existence. It is also evident that humans do not alone enjoy this privilege for the plant also possesses a life before birth. As in the human, the plant is seen to possess a life-spark which is part of the eternal life process and which gives it being. Not only can the plant remember its first existence, but it can pray for the divine life spark or soul which gave it life. Come sapless Blossom, creep not stil on Earth Forgetting thy first birth; 'Tis not from dust, or if so, why doat thou Thus cal and thirst for dew? (The Sap. 1-4) Though it is less than conventional to attribute intelligence to sub-human life, auch as plant and animal life, yet this is not as strange as Vaughan's belief in sentience and intelligence on the part of inanimate matter, such as 4 rocks and stones. The stone, in fact, is sometimes more intelligent than man in its constancy and acknowledgment of the divinity and this is due to the "hid sense" which it possesses of the omnipresence of the divine life-spark in

God's creation: He knocks at all doors, strays and roams, Nay hath not so much wit as sorne stones have Which in the darkest nights point to their homes, By some hid sense their Maker gave ••• (Man. 22-25)

In The Stone, which is quoted below in full, Vaughan gives his clearest statement of: the capabilities and human-like attributes of the stone: I have it now: But where to act, that none shall know, Where I shall have no cause to fear An eye or ear, What man will show? If nights, and shades, and secret rooms, Silent as tombs, Will nor conceal nor assent to My dark designs, what shall I do? Man I can bribe, and woman will Consent to any gainful ill, But these dumb creatures are so true, No gold nor gifts can them subdue. Hedges have ~' said the old sooth, And ev'ry bush is somethings booth; This cautious fools mistake, and fear Nothing but man, when ambush'd there. But I (Alas!) Was shown one day in a 5trange glass That busie commerce kept between God and his Creatures, though unseen. They hear, see, speak, And into loud discoveries break, As loud as blood. Not that God needs Intelligence, whose spirit feeds All things with life, beforè whose eyes, Hell and all hearts stark naked lyes. But he that judgeth as he hears, He that accuseth none, so steers His righteous course, that though he knows All that man doth, conceals or shows, Yet will not he by his own light (Though both all-seeing and all right,) Condemn men; but will try them by A process, which ev'n mans own eye ~mst needs acknowledge to be just. Hence sand and dust Are shak'd for witnesses, and stones Which sorne think dead, shall all at once With one attesting voice detect Those secret sins we least suspect. For know, wilde men, that when you erre Each thing turns Scribe and Register, And in obedience to his Lord, Doth yourmost private sins record.

The Law delivered to the Jews, Who promis'd much, but did refuse Performance, will for that same deed Against them by a stone proceed; Whose substance, though 'tis hard enough, Will prove their hearts more stiff and tuff. But now, since God on himself took what all mankinde could never brook, If any (for he all invites) His easie yoke rejects or slights, The Gospel then (for 'tis his word And not himself shall·judge the world) Will by loose Dust that man arraign, As one then dust more vile and vain. Man can be bribed, but the stone is incorruptible: "these dumb creatures are so true,/No gold nor gifts can them subdue" (12-13). The stone is incorruptible because, unlike man, it

spends · its life "in obedience to his Lord" (44). To most

people, as Vaughan knows, stones appear to be inanimate, but he seems to feel that they possess, as man does, the ability to "hear, see, speak," (22). At the day of judgement, stones will be able to testify as reliable witnesses against man and 63

11 With one attesting voice detect/Those secret sins we least suspect" (40-41). Vaughan's belief in the sentience and intelligence of stones is not left without an explanation. The reason for the animation of stones is the presence within them of the divine life spark: A spirit, and true glory dwell In dust, and stones. (The Check. 35-36) Perhaps it is the durability of the stone which makes it useful as a symbol of constancy, though I am sure that to Vaughan the steadfastness of the stone is not merely symbolic but an actual manifestation of the devotion which all created matter, even though commonly thought inanimate, bears to the divinity. At any rate, stones have a special place within Vaughan's belief and they seem to have the particular blessing and love of the deity. Blest be the God of Harmony, and Love! The God above! And holy dove! Whose Interceding, spirituall grenes Make restless mones For dust, and stones ••• (Church-Service. l-6)

We might even, taking into consideration Vaughan's expressed belief, accept as a serious statement of fact that 11 Marble 5 sweats ,/And Rocks have tears" (Admission. 5-6). In the universal praise which arises from all created matter, Vaughan is definite in his inclusion of the stone, which manages its praise to the divinity even 6 without a tongue:

All things that be, praise him; and had Their lesson taught them, when first made. So hills and va11eys into singing break, And though poor stones have neither speech nor tongue, While active winds and streams beth run and speak, Yet stones are deep in admiration. (The Bird. 11-16) It must be remembered that this universal praise which goes up to God is a praise which arises from a fa11en creation. Though it was man's sin which caused the fall, trees, stones, minerals, as well as man, participated therein: Her Cedar, firr, hew'd stones and go1d were al1 Pol1uted through ·their fall ••• (The Shepheards. 23-24) The constancy of sub-human life has already been amply demonstrated. Though a11 the creatures of nature are in actua1ity fal1en, it is not due to their fau1t. It was man's sin which caused the universa1 fa11; and it is therefore understandab1e that creation should "quarrel" with man, who had brought them to this fallen state:

They seem'd to quarrel with him; for that Act That fel him, f oyl'd them all, He drew the Curse upon the wor1d, and Crackt The who1e frame with his fal1. (Corruption. 13-16) A1though a11 creation fe11 with man, the creatures of nature which are conventiona11y considered 1ower than man, still retain the constancy in their devotion to the divine which should have been man's. Vaughan fee1s this, and to gain the constancy which sub-human 1ife possesses, wou1d g1ad1y exchange his state for theirs. I wou1d I were sorne Bird, or Star, F1utt'ring in woods, or lifted far ·Above this Inne And Rode of sin! Then either Star, or Bird, shou1d be Shining, or singing sti11 to thee. (Christs Nativity. 13-1S) This constancy on the part of nature's creatures is the on1y factor which differentiates them from man's fallen state, for Vaughan makes it obvious that he feels man's sin and consequent fall caused a degradation in both himself and

the pa1m~tree which is equa1. This Plant, you see So prest and bow'd, before sin did degrade Both you and it ••• (The Palm-tree. 2-4) Vaughan discusses the degradation of the entire world in his note addressed to the reader, which is prefixed

to The Life of Paulinus: "The earth at present is BQ! worth 66

the anjoying, it is corrupt, and poysoned with the ~urse" (Works, p. 338). Though we may think now that it is somewhat strange to believe the entire created world fell through man's sin, it is even more surprising to discover that Vaughan believed it should be included in a universal redemption, which all creatures long for and expect:

Trees, flowers ~ herbs; birds, beasts & stones, That since man fell, expect with groans To see the lamb, which all at once, Lift up your heads and leave your moanst For here cornes he Whose death will be Mans life, and your full liberty. (Palm~Sunday. 11-17) The world can feel the degradation which was caused by man's sin and subsequent fall and always weeps to be included in the universal redemption: I victory Which from thine eye Breaks as the day doth from the east, When the spilt dew, Like tears doth shew The sad world wept to be releast. (The Feast. 19-24) This universal redemption which is anticipated by Vaughan and all his "fellow-creatures," and I am sure that does not merely refer to his fellow men, provides an ppportunity for supposedly inanimate stones to demonstrate their life-like 6'J

qualities: The fields are long since white, and I With earnest groans for freedom cry, My fellow-creatures too say, Come! And stones, though speechless, are not dumb. (~ day of Judgement. 13-16) Vaughan seems to assume that stones possess a

"sense" which enables them to groan for the universal redemption in which they would be included: "Can they their heads lift, and expect,/And grone too?" ("And do they so?" 3-4). Vaughan knows that they are not conventionally considered capable of this: my volumes sed They were all dull, and dead, They judg'd them senslesse, and their state Wholly Inanimate. {5-8) But his response to this is a Wordsworthian rejection of what his books had claimed:

Go, go; Seal up thy looks, And burn thy books. (9-10) Vaughan then continues in the poem to praise the constancy of sub-human or inanimate matter in its dedicated, single-minded devotion to the deity and its steadfast longing for the universal redemption. When the constancy of God's creation is compared to the vacillating nature of man, Vaughan would gladly change his place to its "sure state": I would I were a stone, or tree, Or flowre by pedigree, Or sorne poor high-way herb, or Spring To flow, or bird to sing! Then should I (tyed to one sure state,) All day expect my date; But I am sadly loose, and stray A giddy blast each way; 0 let me not thus range! Thou canst not change. (11-20)

The creatures of nature, far from being the wilful, straying beings that men are, find God their "only aym, and mean."

They spend their entire existence in anticipation of the universal redemption:

Sometimes I sit with thee, and tarry An hour, or so, then vary. Thy other Creatures in this Scene Thee only aym, and mean; Sorne rise to seek thee, and with heads Erect peep from their beds; Others, whose birth is in the tomb, And cannet quit the womb, Sigh there, and grone for thee, Their liberty. (21-30) All creatures are sensible of the glories of the universal redemption and consciously desire to be: Fixt by thy spirit to a state For. . evermore. . . . .immaculate...... A state for which thy creatures all Travel and groan, and look and call. (L'Envoy. 15-16, 21-22) The total inclusion of all created matter within the knowledge and love of the deity and within the antici- pated universal redemption is best demonstraUrlin The Book, which I quote here in full:

Eternal God! maker of all That have liv'd here, since the mans fall; The Rock of ages! in whose shade They live unseen; when here they fade. Thou knew'st this papyr, when it was Meer seed; and after that but grass; Before 'twas drest or spun, and when Made linen, who did ~ it then: What were their lifes, their thoughts & deeds Whither good ~' or fruitless weeds. Thou knew'st this Tree, when a green shade Cover'd it, ·since a Cover made, And where it flourish'd, grew and spread, As if it never should·be dead. Thou knew'st this harmless beast, when he Did live and feed by. ·tny decree On each green thing; then slept (well fed) Cloath'd with this skin, which now lies spred A C6vering o're this aged book, Which makes me wisely weep and look On my own dust; meer dust it is, But not so dry and clean as this. Thou knew'st and saw'st them alland though Now scatter'd thus, dost know them so. 0 knowing, glorious spirit! when Thou shalt restore trees, beasts and men, When thou shalt make all new again, Destroying onely death and pain, Give him amongst thy works a place, Who in them lov'd and sought thy face! 70

Perhaps no other poet but Vaughan could look at a book and recognize it as having been made from a part of living nature. He sees, back through all the processes to which the original plant was subjected to make it into paper, a living "seed" which grew into "grass." It would seem that Vaughan believes that the plant, during its life-time, was capable of "thoughts & deeds" and that it was morally responsible for its life and actions, and accountable to God for them, as

"Whither good ~, or fruitless weeds" would seem to imply.

Vaughan sees in the cover a flourishing tree, and in the skin for the covering a "harmless beast." As a part of living nature, they knew the care and love of the Almighty wm "Knew' st and saw'st them all" and even in their present state He "dost know them so." Nor shall they be forgotten at the time of the universal redemption when God ''shalt restore trees, beasts and men." Vaughan ends the poem with the personal plea for inclusion of himself in God's redemption. His only claim for worthiness of this honour is that he loved nature for God's divine presence and looked for evidence of His presence in all His creatures: "Give him amongst thy works a place,/ Who in them lov'd and sought thy face!"

Vaughan's belief in the intelligence and sentience of all created matter is perhaps a natural outgrowth of his belief in an all-encompassing eternal life process. God created the world, but He still remained within it. God, to Vaughan, is one who "fils/(Unseen,) both heaven, and earth." (Psalm 121. 3-4). It is His presence in His creation, which, through the divine life spark, confers the universal intelli­ gence and animation of the world. It is because of God's presence in nature that all creation seems to Vaughan precious and important and worthy of praise. In chapter I (above, p. 23) I quoted a passage from Death in which the way God's servants die was compared to the way the violet dies. The complete analogy should now be clear. The death of the violet is not merely the withering of a flower. It is the death of a part of God's creation which maintains an intelligent and constant devotion to the divinity and which is animated by its portion of the soul­ light. We have seen in The Timber that Vaughan believed plant-life can possess human-like emotions. That the violet does not "grieve, repine, nor fear" to die--when it is capable of doing so--is an indication of its steadfast trust in God which is only equalled by the most devout men.

There is only one poem in which Vaughan attempts a rationalization, or rather, an explanation of what he 72

states explicitly or indirectly implies in his other poems and that is in his poem To his Learned Friend and Loyal Fellow-Prisoner, Thomas Powel of Cant. Doctor of, Divinity. In this poem Vaughan attempts a justification to his friend of the doctrine of the universal animation. The example he uses to persuade his friend is the obvious one of the magnet and the piece of iron. They could not, feels Vaughan, move to one another unless both were animate. The reason for the mutual attraction of the iron and the magnet forms the body of the next chapter, in which this important poem of Vaughan's will be analyzed at greater length. CHAPTER IV

The Celestial-Terrestrial Commerce

There is, within Vaughan's philosophy, the belief in a sympathy, an influence,or an active commerce between things terrestrial and celestial, between the Godhead and

God's creatures, animate or inanimate.

The age-old study of astrology has always included the concept that the stars influence man's life. Vaughan uses the stars and the "predestin'd sympathie" which they have over man in a typically metaphysical manner in arguing tpe bond between himself and his love, Amoret, in his early love poetry:

But, Amoret, such is my fate, That if thy face a Starre Had shin'd from farre, I am perswaded in that state 'Twixt thee, and me, Of-sorne predestin'd sympathie. For sure such two conspiring minds, ·w-hich no accident, or sight, Did thus unite; Whom no distance can confine, Start, or decline, One, for another, were design'd. (To Amoret, Walking. 13-24)

It is clear that the "sympathie" which exists here is not a one way process, like the astrological concept in

73 74

which man cannot control the fate his stars give him, but must accept the inevitability which they portend. The process here implies an equality which the two "conspiring minds 9 " (conspire, in the obsolete sense of agree, concur), achieve. Vaughan's belief in the sympathy or commerce can be traced to the Hermetic philosophy with which he was familiar. The Hermetists believed that each object in the material world is an nanalogue, a symbol or counterpart of a higher celestial reality and bears the signature or character of the celestial l counterpart." The terrestrial counterpart is not passively the recipient, but can actively seek its divine influencer: Sorne kinde herbs here, though low & far, Watch for, and know their loving star. (The Favour. 7-S) The divine, eternal life which permeates all matter and which c·onfers intelligence even on sub-hwnan life, which connects the terrestrial to its divine counterpart, creates, even within a plant, as great a knowledge of its influencer as the divine influencer has of it. "Poor. ·man," Vaughan says: Dares know Effects, and Judge them long before, When th'herb he treads knows much, much more. (The Constellation. 27-2S) The astrologer, who is merely a "poor man" (15), presumes to know the effects of the stars, and since the stars are a 75

celestial part of the divinity this is a justifiable e~fort in attempting to foretell the future; however, man's know- ledge could never be as complete as the star's corresponding herb, which, through the process of the divine commerce, would have a complete knowledge. There is a natural desire within the creatures of nature for the divine life spark within them to return to its divine source: for the more he's bent The more he grows. Celestial natures still Aspire for home. (The Palm-tree. 8-10)

The 11 celestial naturen of the palm tree is the divine life spark which it contains and as long as it is present there will be a commerce with the deity and a striving to reach the divine. This inclination, so evident in sub-human life, presents an example about which Vaughan becomes didactic, for he feels that the natural bent of God's creatures togo up in the direction of the Godhead should be a lesson to man: All things here shew him heaven; Waters that fall Chide, and fly up; Mists of corruptest fome Quit their first beds & mount; trees, herbs, flowres, all Strive upwards stil, and point him the way home. (The Tempest. 25-28) 76

It has already been seen that sub-human life is superior to man in its ·constancy. One reason for this is its undivided response to the divine commerce. In one of his early love poems, Vaughan uses this response argumenta- tively in comparing the position of the lovers to that of the flower to the sun, which is the visible symbol of God.

The carelesse ranks of flowers that spread Their perfum'd bosomes to his head, And with an open, free Embrace, Did entertaine his beamy face; Like absent friands point to the West, And on that weake reflection feast. If Creatures then that have no sance, But the loose tye of influence, (Though fate, and time each day remove Those things that element their love) At such vast distance can agree, Why, Amoret, why should not wee. (To Amoret gone. 13-24) It is interesting to note that in this poem Vaughan states that the creatures of nature ."have no sance" and yet he very definitely contradicts himself in many other poems, sorne of which have been quoted in the previous chapter. It is possible that he means "creatures which are not conventionally considered to have sense." It should be remembered, however, that this poem is one of his earliest and his position here might be one which he later rejected as inadequate, for it is obvious in this poem that though the "creatures" have no 77

"sence" they are capable of fulfilling a task which would imply the possession of sorne kind of sense. They are capable of pointing to the West, where the sun has set. Their know- ledge of the sun's position is due to the divine commerce, "the loose tye of influence," and it is because of this correspondance that things "at such vast distance can agree." The fact that the plant or flower will turn to face the sun is always seen by Vaughan to be a visible demonstration of the terrestrial-celestial commerce and the "Ma.ry-gold in Feasts of Dew" which "Heaves gently, and salutes the hopeful East" (To his Learned Friend. 40, 42) is but one of many flower-sun examples of a sympathy used by Vaughan. In one of his later poems Vaughan states the existence of this sun-plant commerce much more emphatically and includes animal life within the scope of the correspond- ence. "Sure, there's a tye of Bodyes!" Vaughan says quite definitely and this is demonstrable from the action of plants and birds which turn to face the light source. Here also he asserts the belief that the commerce or "tye" is due to a "Sense" possessed by both participants. Absents within the Line Conspire, and Sense Things distant doth unite, Herbs sleep unto the East, and sorne fowles thence Watch the Returns of light ••• ("Sure there' s a tye." 9-12) 78

In the Hermetic tradition life can be maintained only through this bond or "tye" and when it is broken bodies die and 2 decay. The word "Line," Thoma states, is a common term 3 in Cabalistic writings denoting "living created nature." It is the "tyen which enables "Absents" or "Things distant" within living created nature to unite. It is not an irresponsible, reflex action which makes the plants turn to the sun. The plants fulfil this action in full knowledge of their action and of the sun, which is their source of light and life. They are, above all, "knowing flow'rs." Who lives with you, lives like those knowing flow'rs, Which in commerce with light, spend all their hours: Which shut to Clouds, and shadows nicely shun; But with glad haste unveil to kiss the Sun. (!Q his Books. 7-10) It is clear that plants and animals participate in the divine commerce, but what of Vaughan's beloved stones? Are they too participants? "And do they so?" says Vaughan of the stones, "have they a Sense/Of ought but Influence?" ("And do they so?" 1-2). It would seem Vaughan feels it is a foregone conclusion that they are under the divine

11 Influence." However, there is one point which is exceedingly

important and which the poem is intended, in part, to clarify

and that is t he nature of the influence. As in intelligence, 79

it is not sufficient to be the passive recipient of the

divine commerce. However, in order to respond actively,

an intelligence is necessary so that the one influenced will realize the importance of the action. Vaughan pro­

ceeds in the poem to state that all the books he had read had judged the stones "senslesse" (7) and their state "Wholly Inanimate'' (8). This is not Vaughan's belief, · for he concludes with the command, "Go, go; Seal up thy

looks,/And burn thy books" (9-10). In short, inanimate matter is capable of a sense which is more than merely a passive influence. Stones and trees are conscious of their connection, through the commerce, with the divinity and can

pray to it for deliverance from stress and these objects

are more constant in their aim than man is, since they are

kept steadfast through the celestial-terrestrial commerce.

Vaughan expresses the desire to become a stone, tree, flower, herb, spring or bird, since then he will be "tyed to one

sure state" (15). The word "tyed" does not imply a binding or imprisonment contrary to the wishes of the one tyed, but indicates the link which the divine commerce supplies, as

in "Sure, there's a tye of Bodyes!" This "tye" gives to

inanimate matter a greater constancy than is possessed by men, who through free will become "sadly loose, and stray" (17 ). 80

Leishman cornments on "And do they so?" as follows:

Vaughan suggests that the obedience of the creatures is not dictated merely by natural instincts and laws and by the influence of the stars, but also by sorne obscure and latent will to Qood.4

Unfortunately he does not attempt to define the nature of this "latent will." However, we have seen that this "latent will to good" exists because of the active and intelligent participation of sub-human matter in the divine commerce. The life source which influences our lives and by which we have a commerce between the divine and the terrestrial is seen visibly as light. The light .of God, the light of nature (common phrases in Vaughan's works), the light of the sun or stars, all demonstrate the life source. It functions on magnetic principles and, within

Vaughan's ontology, it is not only the magnet that attracts, but the attracted object helps actively by complying. Nature is pictured by Vaughan as governing "The whole Creation" by a "magnetic Cause" which forms a "fast, inviolablè !ll·" What fix'd Affections, and lov'd Laws (Which are the hid, magnetic Caus~ Wise Nature governs with, and by What fast, inviolable tye The whole Creation to her ends For ever provident she bends. • • (Boethius B. 1-6) It is the poem to his friend, Thomas Powel, which gives Vaughan's most lucid explanation of his "rare Doctrine" which attributes sentience to inanimate matter, and which also contains the explanation of why such a sentience can and does exist.

1 Tis a kind Soul in Magnets, that attones Such two hard things as Iron are and Stones, And in their dumb compliance we learn more Of Love, than ever Books could speak before. For though attraction hath got all the name, As if that power but from one side came, Which both unites; yet, where there is no sence, There is no Passion, nor Intelligence: And so by consequence we .cannet state A Commerce, unless both we animate. For senseless things, though ne'r so call'd upon, Are. . deaf,. . . and. . feel. . .no . Invitation;...... 'Tis then no Heresie to end the strife With such rare Doctrine as gives Iron life. {To his Learhed Friend. 7-1S,2l-22)

The fact that a hard substance, such as the magnet or lodestone is, could attract an equally hard substance, such as iron, would imply a "kind" or kindred soul within them both. "Their dumb compliance" (compliance is used in the now obsolete meaning of accord, concord, agreement, amicable relations between parties), one to the ether, demonstrates an equal

love which could not be possible were they wholly inanimate. Vaughan then states that most people believe that the attractive

power of the magnet is a one-way process. But, Vaughan . claims, no "commerce" is possible unless both the attractor and the attracted are animate; for if there was no "sence" (sensation which would imply ànimation), neither of the abjects engaged

in the commerce would be capable of "Passion" (the fact or

condition of being acted upon or affected by action from without; the being passive) or "Intelligence" (in the obsolete

sense of understanding, knowledge, comprehension* the action or fact of mentally apprehending something). The animation

of beth participants in the commerce therefore seems quite obvious to Vaughan, since,if an abject were totally inanimate,

it would be incapable of complying with or responding to the

pull or 11 Invitation" of even the most powerful magnet. It

is, therefore, due to the obvious or visibly demonstrable compliance,which is based on a sympathy or commerce, between the magnet and iron which forces Vaughan to conclude that so­ called inanimate matter possesses "life. '' It has already been seen that a sympathy exists between birds and the sun. This sympathy is most obvious in the cock and a close scrutiny of the poem dedicated to this bird is rewarding in clarifying sorne parts of Vaughan's belief in

the importance and functioning of the ''sympathie" or "commerce."

In Cock-crowing, Vaughan commences the poem with an invocation to God, not as father of man, but as "Father of lights!" (1). Light is the essence of the soul; it is the property of the eternal life which God has planted in all His creatures. Vaughan continues:

what Sunnie seed, What glanee of day hast thou confin'd Into this bird? To all the bread This busie Ray thou hast assign'd ••• (l-4)

The "Sunnie seed" is the soul of the cock and this "busie Ray" has been assigned or given to all cocks, and is the same as that which dwells within man, "Seeing thy seed abides in me" (23). The seed-soul which exists within the cock, since it is in its property divine light, is seen as a "little grain expelling night" (S). The cock waits for and expects its celestial counterpart and, since it is a solar bird, its correspondance is with the sun. The seed-soul or "candle" of the cock, therefore, seems to Vaughan as though it were "tinn'd and lighted at the sunne" (12). The "busie Ray" which is possessed by the cock is that essential part of the life process which activates the direct commerce between the earthly bird and its celestial counterpart, the sun. However, here is again a clear example of the non- passivity of the influenced~ for the cock quite actively responds to the sun. In fact, the sun and the cock form an interacting pattern; when the sun appears, the cock crows. MOre than that, the magnetic property of the divine light soul is also demonstrated in the cock:

Their magnetisme works all night, And dreams of Paradise and light. (5-6.)

It would almost seem that the magnetic property of the light soul within the cock helped to attract the sun and that the cock's soul, through its commerce with the sun, assisted actively in making the sun rise, for Vaughan says:

Their eyes watch for the morning hue, Their little grain expelling night So shines and sings, as if it knew The path unto the bouse of light. (7-10)

If the cock's "little grain" is also responsible for "expelling night," this would imply a certain· amount of dependance by the sun on the cock, or at any rate an interdependance between the two.

In a manner typical of Vaughan's poetry, man is not excused from seeing how much less than the cock he is, for the action of the cock and the sun should be seen as a lesson to man, since: If joyes, and hopes, and earnest throws, And hearts, whose Pulse beats still for light Are given to birds. • . {31-33) then how much more should man's soul ~ly to God? While the sun is the most important visible symbol of the divinity and the strongest celestial counterpart of the celestial-terrestrial commerce, the star is not only the next in importance but has for many centuries been traditionally considered influencers of man and terrestrial events. However, in Vaughan's poem, The Starre, which I quote in full, it can be seen that the function of the star is not that which is conventionally accepted within the discipline of astrology. What ever 'tis, whose beauty here below Attracts thee thus & makes thee stream & flow, And wind and curle, and wink and smile, Shifting thy gate and guile:

Though thy close commerce nought at all imbarrs My present search, for Eagles eye not starrs, And still the lesser by the best And highest good is blest:

Yet, seeing all things that subsist and be, Have their Commissions from Divinitie, And teach us duty, I will see What man may learn from thee.

First, I am sure, the Subject so respected Is well disposed, for bodies once infected, Deprav'd or dead, can have with t~ee No hold, nor sympathie.

Next, there's in it a restless, pure desire And longing for thy bright and vitall fire, Desire that never will be quench'd, Nor can be writh'd, nor wrench'd.

These are the Magnets which so strongly move And work all night upon thy light and love, As beauteous shapes, we know not why, Command and guide the eye. 86

For where desire, celestiall, pure desire Hath taken root, and grows, and doth not tire, There God a Commerce states, and sheds His Secret on their heads.

This is the Heart he craves; and who so will But give it him, and grudge not; he shall feel That God is true, as herbs unseen Put on their youth and green.

The stars, within the discipline of astrology, are conventionally the influencera of man's life. However, in the first verse of this poem it is the star which is attracted and influenced by its terrestrial counterpart. The star is pictured as responding in a coy, girlish fashion, like a 5 coquette trying to pleasè the object of its attraction.

Vaughan is, through the star and its commerce with its terrestrial counterpart, attempting to find a moral, nwhat man may learn from thee,» and so he claims that "thy close commerce nought at all imbarrs/My present search." The word

''close" is, I think, used in the old sense of secrecy and Vaughan is saying that even the utmost secrecy of the star's commerce with its counterpart will not interrupt his search for the moral. In this respect he seems to be contradicting the Hermetic belief that the sympathy which exists between the celestial reality and the terrestrial counterpart cannet 6 be understood by someone outside of the commerce. Vaughan is, in this instance, attempting to surmount the law of nature 87

and therefore the analogy that "Eagles eye not starrs" is appropriate, for in the hierarchy of creation the eagle is lord of his species just as the star is supreme in its field.

The two, being equal, need not "eye" one another as rivals.

Vaughan, in claiming the supreme privilege of comprehension of the divine commerce, is elevating himself to a position 7 of superiority equal to that of the star or the eagle.

The "lesser11 or terrestrial part of the commerce is "blest" by the higher {in both senses of the word) or celestial part, which is the star. All creatures fulfil their "Commissions" from God through the divine commerce and it is this commerce which keeps them constant in their devotion to God. One of the prerequisites for partaking of the divine commerce is a purity of soul, for otherwise it would be impossible to fulfil the divinity's commission and no commerce with the divine could take place. The object of the attraction, "the Subject so respected," is pure of soul in order to partake of the "Sympathie." Just as the star is attracted to its correspondent, so the correspondent is attracted to the star. The terrestrial counterpart longs to possess the "bright and vitall fire" of the eternal life in the celestial counterpart and its longing is one which is constant a~d unvarying: "never will be quench'd,/ $$

Nor can be writh'd, nor wrench'd." The attracted abject here on earth provides the attracting principle for the star, which Vaughan refers to as "the Magnats" in conformity with his belief that the functioning of the terrestrial-celestial sympathy or commerce is magnetic in property. There is an active interaction between the two counterparts. The ''magnetism" of the plant attracts the star, while the "influence" of the star directs the plants, and these two principles form the 8 mutual "sympathy" which exists between them.

When purity of soul and the constant desire to attain the celestial exists in the terrestrial abject, God then· decrees a "Commerce" between the terrestrial and the ctil:estial abjects; the reward of this comnierce is full knowledge of the

Divinity's secrets. The purity and constancy in the terrestrial counterpart of the commerce is what God desires in man's heart~ for then man's response to the divine will be as natural as the plants. Vaughan's use of the comparison of man, in the state which God desires, to the herb at the end of the poem would seem to imply that in all probability the terrestrial counterpart of the star in this poem was a lowly herb.

Thoma points out that the Hermetic "sympathie" 9 functions by means of "element~l affinities." Vaughan elucidates the Hermetist's views on the functioning of these elemental affinities in his prose work, The Chymists Key:

A spirit that is at liberty will easily and quickly free another spirit of the same nature, that is bound up and restrained; This is done, first by reason of that activity & permeability, wch the free spirit is endued with. Secondly by reason of the harmonie, likenesse and love betwixt them; this correlation is the cause that the exterieur free spirit makes way unto, and joynes with that spirit of salt included in the seed, and so doth with more ease work upon him, and excite him: for (as the Proverb hath it) like will easily gQ to like, and their unity is most intimate; Now, you must know, that every spirit, when loose & floating in liquid bodies or liquors, is at liberty in this state; by the mediation of heate, it doth (like a Loadstone) attract to it the spirit that is under restraint: opening and dissolving the body, which holds it in; and the restrained spirit it selfe (like a sensible prisoner,) labours for liberty, conspiring and striving to be in action, and a full communion with the ether; the free spirit by his sudden and subtile accession still exciting and strengthening him, and by this means so provokes him to action, as fire doth inkindle fire; so that the body holding it, must necessarily suffer a change and labefaction, and come to be putrified by its own included spirit, whose operation before was obstructed and kept under; for the included spirit having acquired liberty, and a power to be in action from the other, strives to get out and inlarge it selfe, and to that end breaks and destroyes its first body, and produceth another new one. (Works, pp. 605-606) Although this is a treatise on Hermetical "chemistry" as practised by a seventeenth-century doctor, it is a passage which demonstrates many of the views which Vaughan expresses poetically. One "spirit" is capable of seeking out another because of the elemental affinity, the "harmonie, likenesse and love," between them. As in the secret commerce between the star and its terrestrial counterpart, which knows and 90

seeks for its star, "like will easily gg_ to like, and their unity is most intimate." This attraction or sympathy is magnetic, "like a Loadstone," and as in The Starre, where the star's terrestrial counterpart strives for its bright and vital fire, the "restrained spirit" is equally anxious to reach its "free spirit," for it "labours for liberty, conspiring and striving to be in action, and a full communion with the other." It should be noted that the restrained spirit within the 11 seed" is "like a sensible prisoner," that is, it labours to fulfil the commerce in a mannar which would imply that it possessed reason and intelligence.

Though Vaughan uses this belief in a commerce in discussing a more naturalistic view of the world, he also uses it in the treatment of the more conventional Christian aspect of God. Within religious terminology, the influence which emanates from the Godhead is one which can act as a spiritual guide and which, when followed, will lead to salvation• Sinful man rejects this divine influence: Then since corrupt man hath driv'n hence Thy kind and saving Influence, And Balm is no more to be had In all the Coasts of Gilead. • • (The Bee. 93-96)

But despite sinful man's wilfulness, God keeps up a constant commerce with all His creatures. Vaughan makes this claim 91

in an almost prophetie and certainly divine-privileged manner:

But I (Al as!) Was shown one day in a strange glass That busie commerce kept between God and his Creatures, though unseen. (The Stone. 18-21)

Within even more specifically Christian thought,

Christ's stay on earth after his death is seen as a means

to establish God's commerce:

Thy forty days more secret commerce here, After thy death and Funeral, so clear And indisputable, shews to my sight As the Sun doth, which to those days gave light. (Ascension-day. 33-36) And since Christ's ascension God maintains a "lesser commerce"

through the Bible:

For though thou doest that great light lock, And by this lesser commerce keep: Yet by these glanees of the flock I can discern Wolves from the Sheep. (White Sunday. 21-24)

Even within the individual there exists a commerce

between the divine and the mundane, due to the fact that the

soul must inhabit the body. The soul establishes a commerce with the body, but there also exists a commerce between the

soul and its "chief acquaintance," the divine source:

And though (while here) of force I must Have Commerce somtimes with poor dust, And in my flesh, though vile, and low, As this doth in her Channel, flow, Yet let my Course, my aym, my Love, And chief acquaintance be above ••• (The Dawning. 39-44) 92

The commerce which God maintains with His creatures

is also a two-way process. Though purity is an essential

state for participation in the commerce, God's creatures must also be active:

Nothing hath commerce with Heaven, but what is pure: he that would be pure, must needs be active: Sin never prevailes against us, but in the absence of Virtue, and Virtue is never absent, but when wee are idle. (Of Temperance and Patience )

As in the active desire of the herb to participate in the

commerce with the star, man must make a constant effort to be worthy of the divine commerce; he must actively desire it.

He must even hasten towards it, as Vaughan relates in The World

Contemned: "let us therefore while we have time, labour for true riches, and make earnest hast to that holy and Heavenly

commerce, which is worth. our looking and longing after" (Works, p. 316). To sub-human matter, the acknowledging of the divine commerce is natural and unforced. The true, religious heart

should, in its response to God, pattern itself on the flowers' reaction to the sun: When first thy Eies unveil, give thy Soul leave To do the like; our Bodies but forerun The spirits duty; True hearts spread, and heave Unto their God, as flow'rs do to the Sun. (Rules and Lessons. 1-4) CONCLUSION

The seventeenth century, particularly the earlier part, was an age of religious poets. Vaughan is in the tradition of Donne, Herbert, and the Roman Crashaw in singing his religious poetry, but Vaughan is the only one who sings

Anglo-Catholicism throughout the Puritan regime.

Vaughan is unique too, l'~'Iiss White points out, in having been born in the country with picturesque and beautiful scenery about him. This was a pleasure enjoyed by Herbert only in maturity and never by the "urban Donne" and the l "scholastic Crashaw." To this country doctor was given the "power to put into words that spontaneous and integrated impression of a landscape, that flashing insight into nature which was for him the substance on which he nourished his 2 religious insight." In an age of political and social chaos, Vaughan sings of an ordered and systematic universe. His interest in nature is an attempt to discover and understand the purpose behind "What spirit wheeles th'harmonious world" (Boethius A.

20). He may be disappointed with man and the tumult which man's self-will brings him to, but Vaughan does not doubt the divine order. Thus part of Vaughan's song is of t he antithes is between

93 94

"the calm, orderly, and obedient behaviour of nature, and 3 the restlessness, self-will and disobedience of man." The New Philosophy which called all in doubt for Donne could never cause Vaughan any doubt, for in a universe as ordered as that which Vaughan presents, "new wayes" could only cause a temporary irritation and their end was a foregone conclusion: Thus for all things (in the worlds prime) The wise God seal'd their proper time, Nor will permit those seasons he Ordain'd by turns, should mingled be Then whose wild actions out of season Crosse to nature, and her reason, Would by new wayes old orders rend, Shall never find a happy End. (Boethius D. 15-22)

The God whom Vaughan worships is, above all, a God

of harmony: "Blest be the God of Harmony, and Love!" (Church-

Service. 1). In the heavens, God has ordained a celestial

harmony: Who would unclouded see the Laws Of the supreme, eternal Cause, Let him with careful thoughts and eyes Observe the high and spatious Skyes. There in one league of Love the Stars Keep their old peace, and shew our wars. The Sun, though flaming still and hot, The. . cold,. . . pale. . .MOon . . annoyeth. . . . .not. . . So alternate Love supplys Eternal Courses still, and vies Mutual kindness; that no Jars Nor discord can disturb the Stars. (Boethius F. l-8, 17-20) 95

And for nature, God has established a terrestrial harmony : through which exists,between the basic elements,the "Law of kindness" or commerce:

The same sweet Concord here below ~~kes the fierce Elements to flow And Circle without quarrel still, Though temper'd diversly; thus will The Hot assist the Cold: the Dry Is friend to Humidity. And by the Law of kindness they The. . like. . .relief . . . to. .them . . repay.. . . From these kind turns and Circulation Seasons proceed and Generation. (21-28, 35-36) Heaven and earth, patterned and sustained by God's presence within it, forms a universal harmony:

Thus by Creations law controll'd All things their proper stations hold Observing (as thou didst intend) Why they were made, and for what end. (Boethius C. 25-28)

The eternal God, creator, ruler and director of the eternal life and its perpetual circulations, maintains from His supreme position the universal harmony without which

"-Both heav'n and earth would go to wrack": But all this while the Prince of life Sits without loss, or change, or strife: Holding the Rains, by which all move; (And those his wisdom, power, Love And Justice are;) And still what he The first life bids, that needs must be, And live on for a time; that done He calls it back, meerly to shun 96

The mischief, which his creature might Run into by a further flight. For if this dear and tender sense Of his preventing providence Did not restrain and call things back: Both heav'n and earth would go to wrack. And from their great preserver part, As blood let out forsakes the Heart And perisheth; but what returns With fresh and Brighter spirits burns. This is the Cause why ev'ry living Creature affects an endless being. A grain of this bright love each thing Had giv'n at first by their great King; And still they creep (drawn on by this:) And look back towards their first bliss. For otherwise, it is most sure, Nothing that liveth could endure: Unless it's Love turn'd retrograde Sought that first life, which all things made. (Boethius F. 53-80) It is because of the totality of the universal pattern in which everything that exists is important, through its links with the divine, that Vaughan can attain an

"astronomical sublimity" as well as being a "personal 4 illuminator of the humbler forms of Nature and country life."

God's earthly creatures are connected to God's heavenly beings in a complex network of correspondances which organize the universe in the divine pattern. Through the concept of

"commerce" all things are connected, eventually, to the divinity. Even without knowledge of this commerce, Mbre understands and comments on the "connectiveness" in Vaughan:

His characteristic ideas of nature are associated together like a golden chain, link with link, so that the sight of 97

a withered flower would remind him of the morning fresh­ ness, and this thought would lift his eyes to the hills of his valley from which the dew was supposed to fall, and beyond these to the light that appeared to stream from the mountain of God.~

Vaughan's range of interests in nature has been

r so admirably summed up by Bush that I shall conclude with his comments:

Flowers and fallen timber, blades of grass and the 'poor highway herb', stones and stars that 'nod, & sleepe', singing birds and crowing cocks, the 'gilded Cloud' and the waterfall, dew and rain and the seed growing secretly, all the letters of the divine alphabet proclaim 'The great Chime And symphony of nature'. Life is 'A knowing Joy' in ordered harmony, 'A quickness, which my God hath kist!, and deat~ is only a rebirth in the fullness of knowledge and joy. NOTES

Introduction

l Itrat Husain, The Mystical Element in the Metaphysical Poets of the Seventeenth Century (London, l94S), p. 226. 2 Husain, pp. 231-232. 3 Husain, p. 236. 4 Francis Ernest Hutchinson, Henry Vaughan: A Life and Interpretation (Oxford, 1947) in a chapter entitled "Lawsuits and Family Dissensions," pp. 224-237, discusses the ill feelings between Vaughan and his son, Thomas, with respect to monetary matters. There was also a law suit brought by Catherine, Vaughan's third daughter, who was crippled and indigent, against her father who had refused to support her. Hutchinson attempts to excuse these facts. Helen Ashton, in her fanciful biography, The Swan of Usk: A Historical Novel (New York, 1940) considers the facts so ugly and out of keeping with the character she wishes to portray that she refuses to include them. 5 Husain, pp.243-244.

9S 99

Chapter I

1 All biographical data within this chapter is taken from Hutchinson's biography. 2 Geraldine E. Hodgson, English lviystics (London, 1922), pp. 245-246. 3 Hodgson, English Mystics, p. 230. 4 Helen C. White, The Metaphysical Poets: A Study in Religious Experience (New York, 1936), p. 269. 5 Vaughan's admiration and respect for Herbert caused him to borrow many titles and phrases from the older poet's works. Some of these borrowings have been noted by the following cri tics:

Joan Bennett, Four 1~1eta h sic al Poets: Donne Herbert, Vaughan, Crashaw, 2nd ed. Cambridge, 1953), pp. 71-89. D.J. Enright, "George Herbert and the Devotional Poets," From Donne to Marve11. A Guide to English Literature, ed. Boris Ford (Aylesburg, 1956), III, 152-155. Louise Imogen Guiney, 11 Henry Vaughan the Silurist," The Atlantic Month1y, LXXIII (1894), 688-689. Hutchinson, pp. 102-103. Frank Kermode, ''The Private Imagery of Henry Vaughan," Review of Eng1ish Studies, New Series, I (1950), 206-225. 6 Percy Herbert Osmond, The ll!iystical Poets of the English Church (London, 1919), p. 172. 7 One critic, Louis L. l~rtz, The Poetry of Meditation (New Haven, 1954), pp. 150-152, feels that this poem should be read not in relation to the occult philosophy but in the "great, central meditative traditions" of St. Bernard and St. Bonaventure. However, this seems to me to be an interpreta­ tion made more to support the thesis of his book than to elucidate Vaughan's beliefs. à Though the Hermetic philosophy interested Vaughan in his early life, Robert Sencourt, Outflying Philosophy: A Literary Study of the Re1igious Element in the Poems and Letters of John Donne and in the Works of Sir Thomas Browne lOO

And of Henry Vaughan the Silurist, Together with an Account of the Interest of these Writers in Scholastic Philosophy, in Platonism and in Hermetic Physic, With also sorne Notes on Witchcraft (London, 1923), p. 15$, points out that by middle age Vaughan had discarded his interest in the occult. As Vaughan himself says in one of his later poems published in Thalia Rediviva, 167$:

And my false Magic, which I did believe, And mystic Lyes to Saturn I do give. (The importunate Fortune. 71-72) 9 Mary Elizabeth Dike, Studies of Sorne English Mystical Poets in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.(unpublished thesis. McGill University, 1937), p. 96. 10 White, p. 309. 11 Ross Garner, Henry Vaughan: Experience and the Tradition (Chicago, 1959), p. 52 et seq. 12 Samuel Leslie Bethel, The Cultural Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (London, 1951), p. 150. 13 Bethel, p • . 151. 14 Edmund Blunden, On the Poems of Henry Vaughan: Characteristics and Intimations (London, 1927), p. 55 points out that the "1ow violet" is a flower which seems in Vaughan's poetry to have found special favour with God. He suggests that Vaughan's herbal knowledge through his work as a doctor is the source of this idea. cf. above, p. 23. 101

Chapter II

l Sorne of the critics who deal with this point are: Wilson O. Clough, "Henry Vaughan and the Hermetic Philosophy," Publications of the MOdern Language Association, XLVIII (1933), 1125. John Smith Harrison, Platonism in English Poetry of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York, 1903), pp. 202-210. Elizabeth Holmes, Henry Vaughan and the Hermetic Philosophy (Oxford, 1932), p. 6. Merritt Y. Hughes, "The Theme of Pre-Existence and Infancy in The Retreate," Philological Quarterly, XX (1941), 484-500. Alexander Corbin Judson, "The Source of Henry Vaughan's Ideas Concerning God in Nature," Studies in Philology, XXIV (1927)' 603. Osmond, pp. 154-155. Leonard Q,Yril Martin, "Henry Vaughan and the Theme of Infancy," {J_!JI Seventeenth Cent ury Studies Presented to Sir Herbert Grierson (Oxford, 1938), p. 244. Sencourt, p. 218. J.C. Shairp, "Henry Vaughan, Si1urist," The North American Review, CXXXVIII (1884), ~32-133. -· ._ Henry Francis Thoma, The Hermetic Strain in Seventeenth­ Century English Mysticism (unpublished thesis. Havard University, 1945), p. 243. 2 Malcolm Mackenzie Ross, Poetry & Dogma (New Brunswick, 1954)' p. 94. 3 Ross, p. 235. 4 Ralph M. Wardle, "Thomas Vaughan's Influence upon the Poetry of Henry Vaughan," Publications of the MJdern Language Association, LI (1936), 947. 5 In connection with the regeneration of the Phoenix, an interesting comparison may be made with the poem which Vaughan dedicates to this bird:

LThe Phoeni~ salutes the Sun With pleasant noise, and prays and begs for sorne Of his own fire, that quickly may restore The. . youth. . . and. . vigour,. . . . which. . . he. .had . .before. . 102

0 thou that buriest old age in thy grave, And art by seeming funerals to have A new return of life! whose custom 'tis To rise by ruin, and by death to miss Ev'n death it self: a new beginning take, And. . that. . .thy . .wither'd . . . . body. . .now . .forsake! . . . . Till the old bird a new, young being gains. (The Phoenix. 57-60, 63-68, 80)

Though Vaughan's rather cryptic comment "Phenix-like renew'th/ Beth life, and youth" is sufficiently clear for the purposes of his poem Resurrection and Immortality, I t'hink that his more extensive description of the bird which is the recipient of a "new return of life" acts as a helpful gloss on his remark. 6 Oft have I seen, when that renewing breath That binds, and loosens death Inspir'd a quickning power through the dead Creatures a bed, Sorne drowsie silk-worme creepe From that long sleepe And in weake, infant hummings chime, and knell About her silent Cell Untill at last full with the vitall Ray She wing'd away, And proud with 1ife, and sence, Heav'ns rich Expence, Esteem'd (vaine things!) of two who+e Elements As meane, and span-extents. Shall I then thinke such providence will be Lesse friend to me? (Resurrection and Immorta1ity. 1-16) 7 As incredible as it may seem, this line has been used by Dike, p. 88, to interpret the poem as a statement of Predestination. à K.I~~l. Leudon, Two Mystic Poets and Other Essays (Oxford, 1922), pp. 8-9, claims that there is no dividing line between time and eternity in Vaughan's works, but I think Vaughan makes a very clear distinction both in this poem and in the passage quoted from I~n in Darkness (above, p. 41). 9 Thoma, p. 103. 103

10 Such critics as Ross fai1 to rea1ize that Vaughan's yearning is for the pre-existent state and not childhood. This error leads him to such unfortunate statements as "The child in Vaughan and Traherne is clad e,terna11y in swaddling clothes," p. 95, and "Vaughan's child, stunted eternally like Peter Pan, LCannot7 fit his little limbs along the High Cross," pp. 96-97. Bethel, p. 156, has sensibly established Vaughan's position in relation to the theme of childhood with the comment that "Vaughan has only two poems in which he dilates on the theme of child­ hood; it was certainly no obsession with him." 11 Rosemond Tuve, Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery (Chicago, 1947), p. 224, points out the strength of this description. The "radical image" of the toylsom mole is a "diminution" which results from the contrast posed between the false and the real 1ife. It is "a definition of the true· 'life' by differences." 12 For a more detailed study of "veils" in Vaughan's poetry and the sources for this image, see Molly Maureen Mahood, Poetry and Humanism (London, 1950), pp. 261-264. 104

Chapter III

1 James Blair Leishman, The Metaphysical Poets: Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Traherne (Oxford, 1934), pp. 170-171. 2 Bethel, p. 150. 3 Osmond, p. 170. 4 A study of the stone image in Vaughan's works with possible sources, Biblical, Hermetic and environmental, can be found in Mahood, pp. 265-268. 5 cf. "When Marble weepes, it washeth off the dust,n a phrase which Vaughan uses in his prose work, Of Temperance and Patience (Works, p. 256). 6 William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity (London, 1947), p. 256, considera this passage to be an example of "wit." However, one can only accept the passage as an example of wit if one does not feel that Vaughan really believed stones can express their admiration, and this I cannot accept. 105

Chapter IV

l Holmes, p. 3S. 2 Thoma, p. 141. 3 Thoma, p. 142. 4 Leishman, p. 171. 5 cf. The starres shine in their watches, I doe survey Each busie Ray, And how they work, and wind. {Midnight. 4-7) 6 Holmes, p. 3S. 7 I am indebted to N~. William T. Booth for assistance in interpreting the phrase "for Eagles eye not starrs." g Holmes, pp. 39-40. 9 Thoma, p. 140. 106

Conclusion

l White, p. 261. 2 Ruth Lëoons7 Wallerstein, ~S~t~ud~1~·e~s~1~·n~S~e~v~e~n~t~e~e~n~t~h~­ Cent ury Poetic Tl"ladison, 1950) , p. 313. 3 Leishman, p. 170. 4 Edmund Blunden, Nature in English Literature (London, 1929), p. 67. 5 Paul Elmer lf~re, The Demon of the Absolute (Princeton, 1928), p. 161. 6 Douglas Bush, English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1945), p. 146.

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LIST OF INORKS CITED

Ashton, Helen, The Swan of Usk: A Historical Novel. New York, 1940. Bennett, Joan, Four Mataphysical Poets: Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Crashaw, 2nd edition. Cambridge, 1953. Bethel, Samuel Leslie, The Cultural Revolution of the Seventeenth Century. London, 1951. Blunden, Edmund, Nature in English Literature. London, 1929. On the Poems of Henry Vaughan: Characteristics and Intimations. London, 1927. Bush, Douglas, English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century 1600-1660. Oxford, 1945.

Childe, Wilfred Rowland, "Henry Vaughan," Essays by Divers Hands being the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature of the United Kingdom (New Series), XXII (1945), 131-160. Clough, Wilson O., "Henry Vaughan and the Hermetic Philosophy," Publications of the ~bdern Language Association, XLVIII (1933), 1108-30.

Dike, l~ry Elizabeth, Studies of Sorne English Mystical Poets in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Unpublished thesis. McGill University, 1937. Durr, Robert Allen, "Vaughan's Theme and its Pattern: 'Regeneration,'" Studies in Philology, LIV (1957), 14-28. Empson, William, Seven Types of Ambiguity. London, 1947.

Enright, D.S., "George Herbert and the Devotional Poets," From Donne to Iviarvell, edi ted by Boris Ford (Aylesbury, 1956), pp. 142-159. LVolume III of A Guide to English Literature, 1956---7 112

Garner, Ross, Henry Vaughan: Experience and the Tradition •. Chicago, 1959.

George, Robert E.G. fRobert Sancourt, pseud.7, Outflying Phi1osophy: A Literary Study of the Religious Element in the Poems and Letters of John Donne and in the Works of Sir Thomas Browne And of Henry Vaughan the Silurist, Together with an Account of the Interest of these Writers in Scholastic Philosophy, in Platonism and in Hermetic Physic, With also sorne Notes on Witchcraft. London, 1923. Guiney, Louise Imogen, "Henry Vaughan the Silurist," The Atlantic Monthly, LXXIII (1$94), 6$1-692. Harrison, John Smith, Platonism in English Poetry of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. New York, 1903. Hodgson, Geraldine Emma, English Mystics. London, 1922.

------' A Study in Illumination. London, 1914. Holmes, Elizabeth, Henry Vaughan and the Hermetic Philosophy. Oxford, 1932. Hughes, Helen Sard, "Night in the Poetry of Henry Vaughan," Modern Language Notes, XXVIII (1913), 20$-211. Hughes, Merritt Y., "The Theme of Pre-Existence and Infancy in The Retreate," Philological Quarterlv, XX (1941), 484-500.

Husain, Itrat~ The Mystical Element in the Metaphysical Poets of the Seventeenth Century. London, 194$. Hutchinson, Francis Ernest, Henry Vaughan: A Life and Interpretation. Oxford, 1947. Judson, Alexander Corbin, "Cornelius Agrippa and Henry Vaughan," Modern Language Notes, XLI (1926), 17$-1$1.

, "Henry Vaughan as a Nature Poet," Publications ------of the Modern Language Association, XLII (1927), 113

------' "The Source of Henry Vaughan's Ideas Concerning God in Nature," Studies in Philology, XXIV (1927), 592-606. Kermode, Frank, "The Private Imagery of Henry Vaughan," Review of English Studies, New Series, I (1950)' 206-225. Leishman, James Blair, The Metaphysical Poets: Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Traherne. Oxford, 1934. Loudon, K.M., Two LVlystic Poets and Other Essays. Oxford, 1922.

Lucas, Frank Laurence, Authors Dead and Living. London, 1926.

Macdonald, George, England's Antiphon. London, Lï86~.

Mahood, MOlly l~ureen, Poetry and Humanism. London, 1950.

Martin, Leonard Cyril, "Henry Vaughan and 'Hermes Trismegistus,'" Review of English Studies, XVIII (1942), 301-307. ______, "Henry Vaughan and the Theme of Infancy," [ii! Seventeenth Centur Studies Presented to Sir Herbert Grierson, edited by John Purves • Oxford, 1938 .

.IVI.a.rtz, Louis 1. , The Poetry of Meditation. New Haven, 1954. More , Paul Elmer, The Demon of the Absolute. Princeton, 1928. Osmond, Percy Herbert, The Mystical Poets of the English Church. London, 1919.

The Oxford English D i cti onary, edited by Sir James A.H. Murray, Henry Br adley, W.A. Craigie, C.T. Onions. 10 volumes and supplement. Oxford, 1888-1933.

Paul, Frances, "Henry Vaughan," Contemporary Review, CLXXVI (1949), 368-372. 114

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