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<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/h3>\nTable of Contents<\/h3>\n
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Author<\/strong><\/td>\n| Title<\/strong><\/td>\n | #<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Graham Hartill<\/td>\n | ‘Healing Wings’<\/td>\n | 9<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Gwyneth Lewis<\/td>\n | Melangell Variations<\/td>\n | 20<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Peter W. Thomas<\/td>\n | The Poisoned Grove<\/td>\n | 27<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Robert Minhinnick<\/td>\n | Roadkill Blues<\/td>\n | 45<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | John Killick<\/td>\n | The Riderless Horse’<\/td>\n | 62<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Fiona Sampson<\/td>\n | Poems from ‘de Salmone’: i, ii, iv, v<\/td>\n | 66<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Hilary Llewellyn-Williams<\/td>\n | ‘As Above, So Below’<\/td>\n | 69<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Ric Hool<\/td>\n | Untying the Knot of Gravity<\/td>\n | 77<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | <\/td>\n | The Knot and the Lake<\/td>\n | 78<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Ruth Bidgood<\/td>\n | Cwm Pennant 1-4<\/td>\n | 79<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | R. S. Thomas<\/td>\n | The Flesh Made Word<\/td>\n | 83<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Nigel Jenkins<\/td>\n | Observatory<\/td>\n | 88<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | <\/td>\n | Atom I<\/td>\n | 89<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | <\/td>\n | Atom II<\/td>\n | 90<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | <\/td>\n | In\/dependence<\/td>\n | 91<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Norman Schwenk<\/td>\n | Demon<\/td>\n | 91<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Henry Vaughan<\/td>\n | Distraction<\/td>\n | 92<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Anne Cluysenaar<\/td>\n | Rereading Henry Vaughan’s ‘Distraction’<\/td>\n | 93<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | John Barnie<\/td>\n | Problem<\/td>\n | 109<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | <\/td>\n | Trouble<\/td>\n | 110<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | <\/td>\n | By Arrangement<\/td>\n | 111<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Chris Torrance<\/td>\n | December Meditation<\/td>\n | 113<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | David Crane<\/td>\n | The Poetry of Alchemy and the Alchemy of Poetry<\/td>\n | 115<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Joseph P. Clancy<\/td>\n | Screens<\/td>\n | 123<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | <\/td>\n | Down Under<\/td>\n | 124<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Jeremy Hilton<\/td>\n | The Room That Turned<\/td>\n | 125<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Pennant Roberts<\/td>\n | Associations and Confrontations<\/td>\n | 129<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Sean Street<\/td>\n | Above Newton Farm<\/td>\n | 132<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | John Powell Ward<\/td>\n | Eros<\/td>\n | 133<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Angela Morton<\/td>\n | Thomas Beside the Vaporous Usk<\/td>\n | 134<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Jean Earle<\/td>\n | At the Mirror of Catherine Vaughan<\/td>\n | 135<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Mercer Simpson<\/td>\n | Henry Vaughan Visits His Grandfather at Tretower<\/td>\n | 137<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Tony Curtis<\/td>\n | Illustration & Poem XVII from ‘The Arches’<\/td>\n | 139<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Catherine Fisher<\/td>\n | The Thicket<\/td>\n | 140<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Pauline Stainer<\/td>\n | Karumi<\/td>\n | 141<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | <\/td>\n | Epiphany in Umbria<\/td>\n | 142<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Glyn Pursglove<\/td>\n | Henry Vaughan and the Energies of Rhyme<\/td>\n | 143<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Kim Taplin<\/td>\n | Reprinted from the ‘Transactions of the World’s End & District Field Club’<\/td>\n | 158<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | <\/td>\n | The August Thorn<\/td>\n | 160<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Chandra Wickramasinghe<\/td>\n | The Birch of a Cosmic World View<\/td>\n | 161<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | <\/td>\n | Speech<\/td>\n | 169<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | <\/td>\n | Monsoon<\/td>\n | 170<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | <\/td>\n | The Chase<\/td>\n | 171<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | <\/td>\n | Evening<\/td>\n | 172<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Sue Moules<\/td>\n | Ocean<\/td>\n | 173<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | <\/td>\n | Domestic<\/td>\n | 174<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n | <\/h3>\n\n<\/strong><\/h3>\n Henry Vaughan and the Energies\nHenry Vaughan have in common a fascination with resemblances, whole or \npartial, and with the networks of connection which resemblance sets up. One \nmight think, for example, of his interest in magnetism. Even in his secular \npoems, it is in terms of magnetism, or by analogy with magnetism, that he \ndefines love, for example, as in ‘To Amoret, of the Difference ‘Twixt Him, and \nOther Lovers, and what True Love is’, that strange rewriting of Donne’s ‘A \nValediction: Forbidding Mourning’. Here is the last stanza:<\/p>\n |
Thus to the north the loadstones move
\nAnd thus to them the enamoured steel aspires:
\nThus, Amoret,
\nI do affect;
\nAnd thus by winged beams, and mutual fire,
\nSpirits and stars conspire,
\nAnd this is LOVE. (1)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
1: All quotations from the poetry of Henry Vaughan are taken from The Complete Poems,<\/span> In ‘To His Learned Friend and Loyal Fellow-Prisoner, Thomas Powell of Can\u00ad ‘Tis a kind soul in magnets, that atones <\/p>\n The magnetism of love is frequent in the religious poems, too. One succinct 0 tell me whence that joy doth spring <\/p>\n Vaughan’s employment of magnetic theory as one of his governing meta\u00ad Heaven above, heaven beneath, <\/p>\n 2: For a discussion of relevant studies, see A. V Chapman, ‘Henry Vaughan and the<\/span> <\/p>\n Or, to take another equally fundamental structure of thought, there is the Seeing the world as full of magnetic connections – literal and metaphorical; Given that Vaughan saw the world as full of energy – his is rarely a static Figural interpretation establishes a connection between two events or <\/p>\n 4: See, for example, Barbara K. Lewalski, Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century<\/span> Both, I would suggest, have a relevance to the question of rhyme, which I want Rhyming is, after all, a matter of harmonies and consents – and a matter, ‘Kiss’ rhymes to ‘bliss’ in fact as well as verse. (9)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n If we rhyme kiss and bliss then we reinforce the ‘attractive’ energy of their 8: On some of the affinities between typology and rhyme see Eugene R. Cunnar,<\/span> rhyme – where a kind of semantic rhyme reinforces the phonetic rhyme, I’ll 0 the new world’s new, quickening Sun! <\/p>\n The second from ‘Quickness’ (cf. the “quickening Sun” of the previous ex\u00ad Life is a fixed, discerning light, <\/p>\n where the phonetic reassurance, as it were, of the rhyme, reinforced by the Whose eastern traffic deals in bright 11:\u00a0Harmon (art.cit) talks of ‘harmonic’ and ‘ironic’ rhyme. W. K. Wimsatt’s famous essay,<\/span> A final example from ‘Jesus Weeping (II)’:<\/p>\n A grief so bright <\/p>\n There in the rhyme on light and bright it is surely hard not to hear a third 0 lose it nor’ look up, wilt change those lights <\/p>\n Elsewhere the semantic opposition between light and night is not only held 12:\u00a0Within such a tradition of thought there is, of course, a deeper sense in which such an<\/span> Dear feast of palms, of flowers and dew! <\/p>\n The numbers in the last line here – leaving aside their other kinds of Almighty Judge … <\/p>\n Here the rhyme on light and night, in the last couplet, is supplemented by As he that in some cave’s thick damp <\/p>\n Here Vaughan’s main point is contrast. “Thick damp” (cf. “thick death”) Yet I have one pearl by whose light <\/p>\n Here see and thee are effectively a synonymic rhyme, while light and night Silence, and stealth of days! ’tis now <\/p>\n The best we can do is to hold off darkness, to create an area of light within Yet I have one pearl by whose light <\/p>\n The quatrain is the poem’s affirmative conclusion; heavenly light defeats Hither thou com’st: the busy wind all night The rhyming, obviously, is carried across the two stanzas – abccdd abccdd. 14:\u00a0Translated by Ezra Pound, ‘Quotations from Richard of St. Victor’, Ezra Pound,<\/span> which is central to the poem’s meaning and which is drawn to our attention by For each inclosed spirit is a star In the first quatrain enlightening and light set up one obvious internal Fair and young light! my guide to holy <\/p>\n Again it is not, I suggest mere chance that light and night fall on the fourth I saw Eternity the other night <\/p>\n More might be said of this particular rhyme pair, but let us turn, instead, to 0 what high joys, <\/p>\n The correspondences of showers and fl.owers, of blood and bud, of ease the still shrouds, <\/p>\n and interweaves this rhyme, later in the same poem, with the familiar pair The pious soul by night <\/p>\n There are interesting examples in, for instance, ‘The Rain-bow’ and ‘The Lord, then round me with weeping clouds, <\/p>\n The rhyme pair mind and wind also occurs a number of times, and takes us My soul, there is a country <\/p>\n It is worth noting that in the passage I have just quoted, the two relevant lines I see them walking in an air of glory, <\/p>\n Glory and hoary make a marvellously discordant pair; the poetic energy of What can the man do that succeeds the King? <\/p>\n The careful placement of sincere and deceits ensures that Vaughan’s reader 0 holy, blessed, glorious three, <\/p>\n ‘Trinity-Sunday’ is a beautiful and shapely poem, with its symmetrical What ever ’tis, whose beauty here below <\/p>\n In representing, verbally, a world of correspondences and attractions Vaughan Father of lights! what sunny seed, <\/p>\n 15:\u00a0<\/span>He would surely have been pleased to find modern scientists using the concept of<\/span> Table of Contents Author Title # Graham Hartill ‘Healing Wings’ 9 Gwyneth Lewis Melangell Variations 20 Peter W. Thomas \u2026<\/p>\n
\ned. Alan Rudrum, Penguin, 1983.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ntref, Doctor of Divinity’ he reflects on how<\/p>\n
\nSuch two hard things as iron are and stones,
\nAnd in their dumb compliance we learn more
\nOf love, than ever books could speak before.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nexpression of the topos appears in ‘The Query’:<\/p>\n
\nWhose diet is divine and fair,
\nWhich wears heaven, like a bridal ring,
\nAnd tramples on doubts and despair?
\nWhose eastern traffic deals in bright
\nAnd boundless empyrean themes,
\nMountains of spice, day-stars and light,
\nGreen trees of life, and living streams?
\nTell me, 0 tell who did thee bring
\nAnd here, without my knowledge, placed,
\nTill thou didst grow and get a wing,
\nA wing with eyes, and eyes that taste?
\nSure, holiness the magnet is,
\nAnd love the lure, that woos thee down;
\nWhich makes the high transcendent bliss
\nOf knowing thee, so rarely known.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nphors has often been written about, and needn’t be discussed at length here.(2)
\nIts prominence in Vaughan’s poetry will serve as a convenient and familiar
\nillustration of Vaughan’s characteristic sense, common to Hermetic philosoph y,
\nof the cosmos as a network of correspondences and resemblances. This is how
\nhis brother Thomas puts it, translating older Hermetic texts:<\/p>\n
\nStars above, stars beneath,
\nAll that is above is also be)leath:
\nUnderstand this, and be happy: (3)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n Magnetic Philosophy’, Southern Review (Adelaide), 4, 1971, 215-226.<\/span>
\n 3: Thomas is, in effect, translating from the so-called Tabula Smaragdina or Emerald<\/span>
\n Tablet attributed to Hermes Trismegisms. Wayne Shumaker translates the relevant section<\/span>
\n thus: “What is below is like that which is above, and what is above is like that which is<\/span>
\n below, to accomplish the miracles of one thing” (The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance: A<\/span>
\n Study of Intellectual Patterns, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1972, p.179).<\/span><\/p>\n
\nprominence of typological thinking in Vaughan’s poetry. (4) At its simplest,
\ntypology involves matching Old Testament types with New Testament anti\u00ad
\ntypes; the Tree of the Garden interpreted as a type of the Cross, for examples,
\nor Moses as a type or figura of Christ. Typology is too rich and complex a
\nsubject for it to be explored in detail here. For the present purposes it will
\nserve to quote John Weemes, writing a few years earlier than Vaughan and
\ntalking of typology as a method of reading which allows us “to … see the
\nharmony and consent that is betwixt Old and New Testament” . (5)<\/p>\n
\nseeing texts (above all the Bible) as full of ‘harmonies’ and ‘consents’: both
\nmodes of thought suggest a particular sensitivity to patterns of echo and
\nresemblance, of relationships in which similarity and difference coexist, an
\nalertness to energies set up amongst objects and events by such networks of
\nlikeness and unlikeness. In a poet such a sensibility, such a predisposition of
\nthought, we might reasonably expect to be registered not just in the content of
\npoems but in the structure of their language.<\/p>\n
\nworld – we might borrow, however inappropriate it might at first seem, some
\nideas from Charles Olson’s Projective Verse, with its poetics based, ultimatel y,
\non the model of physics and its definition of a poem as “energy transferred
\nfrom where the poet got it … by way of the poem itself to, all the way over to,
\nthe reader”, seeing the poem as “a high energy construct and, at all points, an
\nenergy-discharge”. (6) I’d like to combine that notion, that metaphor for the
\nwriting (and reading) of the poem, with some further observations on
\ntypology, or figura. I take them from a famous essay by Erich Auerbach, called
\n‘Figura’ and first published in 1944, where he writes that:<\/p>\n
\npersons, the first of which signifies nor only itself but also the second,
\nwhile the second encompasses or fulfils the first. (7)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n Religious Lyric, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1979; Donald R Dickson, The<\/span>
\n Fountain of Living Waters: The Typology of the Waters of Life in Herbert, Vaughan and<\/span>
\n Traherne, Columbia, University of Missouri Press, 1987.<\/span>
\n 5: The Christian Synagogue, 4th edition, 1633, p. 60.<\/span>
\n 6: Quotations are taken from the text in Modern Poets on Modern Poetry, ed. James<\/span>
\n Scully, London, Fontana\/Collins, 1966, pp. 270-282.<\/span>
\n 7: Erich Auerbach, Scenes from the Drama of European Literature: Six Essays, New York,<\/span>
\n Meridian Books, 1959, p. 53.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nto look at in Vaughan’s work. (8)<\/p>\n
\ntoo, of energies both complementary and competitive. When two words
\nrhyme, we might say (to use, albeit inverted, an analogy from magnetism) char
\n– in the reader’s experience of the text – they are attracted by their similarity
\nof sound, while simultaneously being pushed apart, as it were, by their dif\u00ad
\nference in meaning. So two forces, two kinds of energy, are active concurrently
\nas we read. In every individual case the relative force of the two kinds of
\nenergy will differ. Much will depend, for instance, on the presence or other\u00ad
\nwise of what one might call a semantic or conceptual rhyme between the two
\nwords which are phonological rhymes. A quotation from Byron might help
\nhere:<\/p>\n
\nsimilarity in sound by the additional presence of a kind of semantic rhyme.
\nBut if we rhyme, say, kiss and miss then in all probability we increase the
\nrepulsive energy (to talk again in magnetic terms) of semantic difference and
\nset it up in strong opposition to the attractional energy of the similarity of
\nsound. So, even considering only these two factors – sound and meaning – it is
\nclear, I hope, that the experience of rhymes within a poem can produce very
\ndifferent kinds of effects on the reader. Of course other elements -such as the
\nparallelism or otherwise of syntactical structures – will alter (intensifying or
\nmoderating) the kinds of force-fields set up by the rhymes. (10) The kiss\/bliss
\nkind of rhyme might, perhaps a little fancifully, be related to the conceptual
\nrhymes of typology- its “harmonies” and “consents” (to quote Weemes again)
\nare intellectual as well as phonological, the first word – “kiss” – secs up an ex\u00ad
\npectation which is, to paraphrase Auerbach, ‘fulfilled’ by the second, “bliss”,
\non levels both of sound and sense.
\nIn considering Vaughan in the light of these suggestions, I shall employ two
\nsomewhat simplified terms as a kind of shorthand, a crude way of talking
\nabout the two kinds of rhyme effect, rhyme energy, discussed. The kiss\/bliss<\/p>\n
\n ‘Typological Rhyme in a Sequence by Adam of St. Victor’, Studies in Philology, 84, 1987,<\/span>
\n 394-417.<\/span>
\n 9: Don Juan, VI. 59.<\/span>
\n 10: Such matters are well and helpfully discussed in William Harmon’s ‘Rhyme in English<\/span>
\n Verse: History, Structures, Functions’, Studies in Philology, 84, 1987, 394-417.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ncall synonymic rhyme; the kiss\/miss kind of rhyme, where a difference in
\nsemantic force works against the phonetic rhyme, I’ll call antonymic rhyme. (11)
\nSomething of the way this tends to work itself out in Vaughan’s poetry is
\nperhaps clear if we look at a single key word in his symbolic vocabulary –
\nlight. Light, ultimately the Divine Light, is, of course, one of the key polarities
\nof Vaughan’s symbolic world. I make the assumption chat Vaughan would
\nhave seen rhyme as more than merely decorative; that he would have seen
\n(heard?) it, rather, as one means of making his poems those kinds of “high\u00ad
\nenergy constructs” Olson talks of, and which Vaughan saw in the world around
\nhim – his earth is always, it seems, in motion, in process. So let’s look at some
\nof the ways in which Vaughan uses light as a rhyme word. I say ‘some’ because
\nI’m not, of course, making the slightest pretence to exhaustiveness. It often
\noccurs in what I have called synonymic rhymes. Only a few examples are here
\nconsidered. The first is from ‘L’Envoy’, the poem which closes Part Two of
\nSilex Scintillans:<\/p>\n
\nEver the same, and never done!
\nThe seers of whose sacred light
\nShall all be dressed in shining white …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nample):<\/p>\n
\nA knowing joy;
\nNo chance, or fit: but ever bright,
\nAnd calm and full, yet doth not cloy …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nsemantic consonance, does much to give an irresistible force to the affirmation
\nbeing made. A third example I take from ‘The Query’ (again), where the topic
\nis Joy:<\/p>\n
\nAnd boundless empyrean themes,
\nMountains of spice, day-stars and light,
\nGreen trees of life, and living streams …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/h5>\n
\n ‘One Relation of Rhyme to Reason’, The Verbal Icon, Louisville, University of Kentucky<\/span>
\n Press, 1954, pp. 153-166, should also be consulted on this matter.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n‘Twill make the land of darkness light …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nunspoken rhyme word – night. ”A grief so bright\/Twill make the land of
\ndarkness light”. The sense is of darkness transformed (potentially) to light;
\nthat sense is enacted by the elusion, as it were, of the rhyme on night which
\n“the land of darkness” seems to set up. It isn’t, of course, a rhyme which
\nVaughan avoids elsewhere.
\nIt might reasonably be argued that the fundamental polarities in Vaughan’s
\nsymbolism (and in the Christian-NeoPlatonic-Hermetic traditions from which
\nso much of it comes) are light and darkness. (12) A poet interested in the energies
\nof rhyme would, naturally, be intrigued by the rhyme on light and night,
\nobviously a perfect example (on one level) of what I’ve caJl.ed antonymic
\nrhyme – where the attractive force which the similarity of sound exerts exists
\nin a kind of beautiful tension with the pushing-apart created by the presence
\nof starkly antonymic meanings. (13) (I am, of course, reversing the polarities of
\nphysical magnetism, by talking of likeness of sound attracting, and unlikeness
\nof meaning repelling. To do so seems to me to be truer to the experience of
\nreading). Let us turn to some examples of the more complex rhyming energies
\nset up by the light\/night pair.
\nMy first example is not very dissimilar from my quotation from ‘Jesus
\nWeeping’, in that it too is concerned with the transformation of light into
\ndark; it is from the closing lines of ‘Rules and Lessons’:<\/p>\n
\nFor chains of darkness, and eternal nights?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nin check by the similarity of rhyme, bur also integrated into other intriguing
\nverbal patterns. Take, for example, these lines from ‘Palm-Sunday’:<\/p>\n
\n apparent polarity is merely superficial.<\/span>
\n13:\u00a0One of the fragments of Heraclitus has a particular aptness here: “Things taken<\/span>
\n together are wholes and not wholes, something which is being brought together and<\/span>
\n brought apart, which is in rune and out of rune; out of all things there comes a unity, and<\/span>
\n out of a unity all things” (G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philo\u00ad<\/span>
\n sophers, 2nd edition, Cambridge, 1983, p. 190.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nWhose fruitful dawn sheds hopes and lights;
\nThy bright solemnities did show,
\nThe third glad day through two sad nights.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nsignificance – relate to the phrasing in the previous lines, to the trio of “palms
\n… flowers … and dew”, and the duo of “hopes and lights”. I mention this
\nonly so as to make it clear that I’m not suggesting that it is ever rhyme alone
\nwhich articulates the structural and semantic energies of a passage. The lines
\nalso draw, of course, on another kind of energy – that of the earth’s natural
\nfruitfulness, through words such as “feast”, “palms”, “flowers” and “dew”.
\nAnother passage from ‘Abel’s Blood’:<\/p>\n
\n……………. 0 accept
\nOf his vowed heart, whom thou hast kept
\nFrom bloody men! and grant, I may
\nThat sworn memorial duly pay
\nTo thy bright arm, which was my light
\nAnd leader through thick death and night!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nthe internal rhyme on bright and light, and the alliteration which links light
\nand leader. Bright, light and leader are thus given a kind of combined force
\nwhich enacts the final couplet’s claim of the power that the middle term in the
\nchain – light – has over death and night. Those who doubt Vaughan’s crafts\u00ad
\nmanship might like to consider this couplet further and the way, for example,
\nthe movement changes with the heavy consonants of “through thick death”.
\nThe same adjective, thick, and the same supportive alliteration on the letter
\n‘1 ‘, are prominent in another instance of the light-night rhyme, from ‘Silence,
\nand stealth of days’:<\/p>\n
\nLocked from the light,
\nFixeth a solitary lamp,
\nTo brave the night …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nstands against the light – “locked from the light! [and the] solitary lamp”. And
\nit is worth noticing that both the rhymes here, damp\/lamp and light\/night are
\nantonymic. The pattern is made more intriguingly complex by being, effec\u00ad
\ntivel y, a kind of chiasmus – while damp precedes lamp, night succeeds light.
\nTranslating the ‘meanings’ of the rhyme words gives us the patterns: darkness
\n-light -light -darkness. Compare this with the pattern in the next example,
\nfrom the same poem, ‘Silence, and stealth of days’:<\/p>\n
\nAll things I see,
\nAnd in the heart of earth, and night
\nFind Heaven, and thee.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nare antonymic. See is, for obvious reasons, cognate with light and so is thee
\n(God as the divine light). Thus the four lines’ rhymes give us, this time, the
\npattern: light – light – darkness -light. In the first passage two ‘light’ rhymes
\nbalance two ‘dark’ rhymes; in the second three ‘light’ rhymes dominate a
\nsingle ‘night’ rhyme. The difference is not an accident. In the first passage,
\nnear the beginning of the poem Vaughan’s subject is wholly earthly, the mun\u00ad
\ndane struggle against literal darkness. His image is of a lamp fighting against
\nencompassing darkness. Let me put the lines back into context:<\/p>\n
\nSince thou art gone,
\nTwelve hundred hours, and not a brow
\nBut clouds hang on.
\nAs he that in some cave’s thick damp
\nLocked from the light,
\nFixeth a solitary lamp,
\nTo brave the night
\nAnd walking from his sun, when past
\nThat glimmering ray
\nCuts through the heavy mists in haste
\nBack to his day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nthe surrounding darkness. The rhymes, as we have seen, enact this precarious
\nbalance-dark [damp] – light-light [lamp] – dark [night]. The other quatrain
\ncomes, on the other hand, from the end of the poem, there Vaughan’s subject
\nis not the battle against literal darkness, fought with a man-made lamp. Now
\nthe subject is the light of heaven and the protagonists’s means to its discovery
\nis not a lamp, but a pearl (the Bible, presumably):<\/p>\n
\nAll things I see,
\nAnd in the heart of earth, and night
\nFind Heaven, and thee.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\ndarkness, and that triumph is, again, acted out by the rhymes – three ‘light’
\nrhymes now contain and overcome the single rhyme night.
\nA few more examples of the light\/night rhyme deserve discussion. In ‘The
\nBird’, for instance, the rhyme – implicit and explicity – comes close to struc\u00ad
\nturing the poem. Here’s the opening:<\/p>\n
\nBlew through thy lodging, where thy own warm wing
\nThy pillow was. Many a sullen storm
\n(For which course man seems much the fitter born,)
\nRained on thy bed
\nAnd harmless head.
\nAnd now as fresh and cheerful as the light
\nThy little heart in early hymns doth sing
\nUnto that Providence, whose unseen arm
\nCurbed them, and clothed thee well and warm.
\nAll things that be, praise him; and had
\nTheir lesson taught them, when first made.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nThe a rhyme and the b rhymes, that is, are the ones that link the two stanzas –
\nnight and light, wing and sing. One pair of antonymic rhymes – night\/light,
\none pair of synonymic rhymes – wing\/sing. I call these last synonymic because
\nboth of them belong to the bird – symbol, here and elsewhere, of spiritual
\nresponsiveness. I suspect Vaughan would have agreed with Richard of St.
\nVictor in saying: “Watch birds to understand how spiritual things move,
\nanimals to understand physical motion”. (14) So much so that another im\u00ad
\nmensely fertile rhyme pair in Vaughan’s poems is that of “light” and “flight”.
\nBut to return to ‘The Bird’ for a moment. The antithesis of light and night,<\/p>\n
\n Selected Prose 1909-1965, ed. W. Cookson, London, Faber and Faber, 1973 p. 73 (In avibus<\/span>
\n intellige studia spiritualia, in animalibus exercita corporalia).<\/span><\/p>\n
\ntheir structural significance as rhymes in these first two stanzas, is further
\nreinforced later in the poem, in two quatrains beginning at line 19:<\/p>\n
\nEnlightening his own little sphere,
\nWhose light, though fetched and borrowed from far,
\nBoth mornings makes, and evenings there.
\nBut as these birds of light make a land glad,
\nChirping their solemn Matins on each tree:
\nSo in the shades of night some dark fowls be,
\nWhose heavy notes make all that hear them, sad.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nrhyme; in the second the familiar light and night reappear. Lines 1 and 4 of
\nthe quatrain offer as end rhymes an antonymic rhyme on glad and sad; the
\ninternal rhyme on light and night in lines 1 and 3, constitutes a kind of counter\u00ad
\npoint to it. Each occurs on the sixth syllable of its respective line; each is the
\nnoun in a possessive phrase (“birds of light”, “shades of night”); there is noth\u00ad
\ning merely fortuitous about this carefully constructed scheme. Actually, that
\nkind of carefully structured internal rhyme is relatively common in Vaughan.
\nAnother striking example occurs in one of the pilcrowed poems, beginning
\n“fair and young light'”:<\/p>\n
\nGrief and soul-curing melancholy;
\nWhom living here I did still shun
\nAs sullen night-ravens do the sun …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nsyllables of lines 1 and 4. Metrical emphasis functions to draw the rhyme –
\nwith all its implications – to our notice.
\nA final example of this particular rhyme, which combines synonymic and
\nantonymic rhymes to achieve a quiet climax of visionary certitude contributes
\nmuch to the famous opening lines of ‘The World (I)’:<\/p>\n
\nLike a great Ring of pure and endless light,
\nAll calm, as it was bright ….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nsome of the ways Vaughan employs what I have been calling the energies of
\nrhyme. In contexts of assurance, or intense happiness, he frequently piles
\nup synonymic rhymes as a means of emphasis. Consider, for example, these
\nstanzas from ‘The Feast’:<\/p>\n
\nThe turtle’s voice
\nAnd songs I hear! 0 quickening showers
\nOf my Lord’s blood
\nYou make rocks bud
\nAnd crown dry hills with wells & flowers!
\nFor this true ease
\nThis healing peace,
\nFor this taste of living glory,
\nMy soul and all,
\nKneel down and fall
\nAnd sing his sad victorious story.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nand peace don’t, I think, need explication. Here, in several places, semantic
\nand phonetic rhymes are further reinforced by syntactical rhymes, if I may call
\nthem that. In the first stanza, for example, the initial Ands of the long third
\nand sixth lines; in the second the ands of lines four and five, and the parallel
\nadjective-noun phrases which close lines three and six (“living glory”\/”victor\u00ad
\nious story”). Of course synonymic rhymes can also function as means to
\nemphasise moods of a very different kind. A favourite rhyme of Vaughan’s,
\nfor example, is on cloud and shroud – a kind of thematic opposite of the
\nrhymes on light and bright or light and flight. So, in ‘The Morning-Watch’, he
\ntalks of:<\/p>\n
\nOf sleep, and clouds<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nlight and night:<\/p>\n
\nIs like a clouded star, whose beams though said
\nTo shed their light
\nUnder some cloud
\nYet are above,
\nAnd shine, and move
\nBeyond that misty shroud.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nDwelling-Place’, but I’ll quote just one more, from ‘The Storm’:<\/p>\n
\nAnd let my mind
\nIn quick blasts sigh beneath those shrouds
\nA spirit-wind …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nclose to the heart of Vaughan’s spiritual meteorology, with “wind” having all
\nkinds of affinities with words such as breath and spirit.
\nMost of these can, at the cost of some simplification, be described as syn\u00ad
\nonymic rhymes. The more startling single effect, the greater energy, is generally
\nproduced, however, by what I’ve called antonymic rhymes. Take, for example,
\nthe extraordinary moment early in the poem ‘Peace’, where the rhyme on
\ndanger and manger startles the reader, as it holds phonetic similarity and
\nsemantic dissimilarity in perfect equipoise:<\/p>\n
\nFar beyond the stars,
\nWhere stands a winged sentry
\nAll skilful in the wars,
\nThere above noise, and danger
\nSweet peace sits crowned with smiles,
\nAnd one born in a manger
\nCommands the beauteous files …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nare the only ones not endstopped; it’s almost as if Vaughan avoids that par\u00ad
\nticular additional form of emphasis so as to keep the impact of this startling
\nrhyme within reasonable bounds.
\nOnly a few other anconymical rhymes can be considered here. In one of the
\nmost famous elegies, ‘They are all gone into the world of light!’ occur the
\nlines:<\/p>\n
\nWhose light doth trample on my days:
\nMy days, which are at best but dull and hoary,
\nMere glimmering and decays.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nthe stanza derives, in part, from the friction between their phonetic affinity, on
\nthe one hand, and their semantic antipathy on the other. Such a controlled
\ncontrast cooperates with the splendid unexpectedness of a verb like trample in
\nthe line between them.
\nAntonymic rhyme, as I have called it, contributes to the effect – the marvel\u00ad
\nlous effect – of the mystical oxymorons of ‘The Night’. A poem which cele\u00ad
\nbrates the “dazzling darkness” of God in its last stanza, gets there via rhymes
\nsuch as noon and moon, Light and night (twice), and peep and sleep.
\nIn ‘The Hidden Treasure’ Vaughan’s most familiar pair of antithetical rhymes
\nis strikingly employed in the first few lines of the poem:<\/p>\n
\nEven what was done before, and no new thing.
\nWho shows me but one grain of sincere light?
\nFalse stars and fire-drakes, the deceits of night
\nSet forth to fool and foil thee, do not boast;
\nSuch coal-flames show but kitchen-rooms at most.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nexperiences the full energy of the antithesis between light and night, reinforced
\nas such energy is by the patterns of alliteration and internal rhyme.
\nThis brief – and tentative – exploration may be brought towards a close by
\na glance at a few other instances of Vaughan’s purposeful use of rhyme.
\nSometimes the rhymes function as part of the larger scheme of thought ‘in a
\nway beyond either of my simplistic categories. Take, for example, the short
\npoem ‘Trinity-Sunday’. The poem is built, explicitly and implicity, around two
\nnumbers: 3 – for the trinity, and 2- for the typological pair of which the poem
\nspeaks:<\/p>\n
\nEternal witnesses that be
\nIn heaven, One God in trinity!
\nAs here on earth (when men withstood,)
\nThe Spirit, Water, and the Blood,
\nMake my Lord’s Incarnation good:
\nSo let the Anti-types in me
\nElected, bought and sealed for free,
\nBe owned, saved, Sainted by you three!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nrhyme scheme of aaa bbb aaa. The symmetry is reinforced by the presence of
\n‘three’ as the rhyme word of first and last lines. The pattern of threes
\neverywhere informs the syntax and word-order – the three adjectives of the
\nfirst line – “hol y, blessed, glorious”; the three nouns of line 5 – “Spirit, Water,
\nand … Blood”; the three verbs of line 8 – “elected, bought and sealed”; the
\nclimactic three verbs of the last line – “owned, saved, Sainted” – or, to quote
\nthe last line in full, “Be owned, saved, Sainted by you three!” We may also note
\nthe symmetrically framing internal rhyme on the first and last syllables of the
\nline.
\nA great many more examples and instances might be offered; but I hope to
\nhave shown that in his use of rhyme Vaughan is far from being the careless
\ncraftsman of too many accounts; to have shown, too, that for Vaughan rhym\u00ad
\ning was a means of and to poetic energy, a verbal equivalent to the energies of
\ncorrespondence Vaughan found in the world around him (15) and which he
\nsought to articulate in the smaller worlds of his poems. Attraction and energy
\nare intimately related phenomena in Vaughan’s world-view, and in the verbal
\ntexture of his poems. In the opening lines of ‘The Star’, the star’s attraction to
\nsomething below, a kind of cosmic rhyme, produces a flurry of verbs:<\/p>\n
\nAttracts thee thus & makes thee stream & flow,
\nAnd wind and curl, and wink and smile,
\nShifting thy gate and guile …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nturned naturally and with conscious artistry to the ‘attractions’ of rhyme (and
\nto the energies of alliteration), and they are central to the streaming and
\nflowing, the winding and curling or, to borrow words from ‘Cock-Crowing’,
\nthe shining and singing of Vaughan’s verse. Indeed, the first two stanzas of
\nthat poem will serve as a closing exemplum of Vaughan’s exactness and power
\nas a maker of rhymes:<\/p>\n
\nWhat glance of day hast thou confined
\nInto this bird? To all the breed
\nThis busy ray thou hast assigned;
\nTheir magnetism works all night,
\nAnd dreams of Paradise and light.
\nTheir eyes watch for the morning hue,
\nTheir little grain expelling night
\nSo shines and sings, as if it knew
\nThe path unto the house of light.
\nIt seems their candle, howe’r done,
\nWas tinned and lighted at the sun.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n rhyme as part of their image of the world; see, for example, the fascinating article ‘Rhyme\u00ad<\/span>
\n like Repetitions in Songs of Humpback Whales’ by Linda N. Guinee and Katharine B.<\/span>
\n Payne, Ethology, 79, 1988, 295-306.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"