\n| Bruce James<\/td>\n | The Lip Curved Out and Down<\/td>\n | 182<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n ( Drawings by Susan Milne appear on the cover and on pages 42, 79, 106, 136 and 162. The editors wish to thank the Brecknock Museum for permission to reproduce ‘Catsback’ on p. 79. \u00a0)<\/em><\/p>\nExerpt<\/span>
\n<\/strong><\/h3>\nThe Language of Light: Henry Vaughan and the Puritans<\/h2>\nBY PETER W. THOMAS<\/p>\n I:\u00a0A DAZZLING DARKNESS<\/h4>\nHow could Jonathan Post, confronted with lines like<\/p>\n I saw Eternity the other night
\nLike a great Ring of pure and endless light
\nAll calm, as it was bright<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n dub Henry Vaughan “a poet of darkness”? (1) The poet’s pages are awash with
\nlight – from the stone in ‘Regeneration’ , in Silex Scintillans I<\/em>, that “quick as
\nlight\/Danced through the flood”, (R, p. 149) to the opening of the last poem in
\nSilex II<\/em>:<\/p>\n0 the new world’s new, quickening Sun!
\nEver the same and never done!
\nThe seers of whose sacred light
\nShall all be dressed in shining white.
\n(‘L’Envoy’, R, p. 311)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n And see what shinings lie between! ‘Resurrection and Immortality’, looking
\nforward to “that mighty, and eternal light”, pictures the “spruce bride, … I …
\nclothed with shining light\/All pure, and bright …” (R, pp.1 52-3). ‘Man’s Fall<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [l] Henry Vaughan: the Unfolding Vision, Princeton University Press, 1982, p. 199. The lines are<\/span>
\nfrom ‘The World (I)’ in Henry Vaughan. The Complete Poems, ed. Alan Rudrum, Penguin Classics,<\/span>
\n1956 (1976), p. 227. Further Vaughan verse quotations are from this edition, referenced R in the text.<\/span>
\n9<\/span><\/p>\nand Recovery’ recalls “A train of lights, which in those sun-shine days\/Were
\nmy sure guides …” (R, p. 164).’ The Retreat’ (R, pp. 172-3) recollects “those
\nearly days! when I shined in my Angel-infancy”. And so the images (as with “a
\nwhite celestial thought” and “Bright shoots of everlastingness” from that same
\npoem) proliferate and cluster. “The stars shine in their watches”, prompting
\nan eager prayer in ‘Midnight’:<\/p>\n Come then, my god!
\nShine on this blood,
\n. . . . . . . .
\n0 what bright quickness,
\nActive brightness,
\nAnd celestial flows
\nWill follow after
\nOn that water
\nWhen thy spirit blows!
\n(R, p. 175)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n “God’s saints are shining lights” in ‘Joy of my Life’: “They are that City’s
\nshining spires\/We travel to” (R, p. 177). Pious souls, like stars, “are above,\/And
\nshine” (‘The Morning Watch’, R, p. 179). “And when I cannot see, yet do you
\nshine\/And beat about your endless line” (‘The Constellation’, R, p. 230).
\nSometimes, however, the shining is not, like these, a past or a future prospect.
\nThere are moments, as in ‘Cheerfulness’, when memory and expectation meet
\nin a present impulse of illumination: “I shine, and move\/Like those above” (R,
\np. 184). Or as in ‘Mount of Olives(Il)’ (R, pp. 238-9) when recapitulation –<\/p>\n When first I saw true beauty, and thy joys
\nActive as light, and calm without all noise
\nShined on my soul …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n becomes renewal: “I shine and shelter underneath thy wing”. And that shining
\nis both a spiritual and poetic state – or so ‘Christ’s Nativity’ suggests:<\/p>\n I would I were some bird, or star,
\nFluttering in woods, or lifted far
\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
\nThen either star, or bird, should be
\nShining, or singing still to thee.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n So things terrestrial and celestial (“bird, or star … star, or bird”) are drawn
\ntogether in the poet’s imagination to express the intense longing that he, like
\nthat creation, might shining sing, and singing shine. For to shine thus is to reflect
\nthat light which (as the poem’s opening image, “The Sun doth shake\/ Light from
\nhis locks” expresses it) God sheds. So to shine and sing is to be, quintessentially,
\na Christian poet. Maybe, however, another nuance lurks in that word “shine”,
\nbeyond the root meanings of shedding and reflecting radiance: Vaughan, far
\nfrom turning his back self-effacingly on literary ambition, may have hoped,
\nnow more than ever, to be conspicuous. And however obliquely, the closing
\nprayer (‘Begging(!)’, R, p.2 48) of Silex Scintillans I in 1650- “Let no night put
\nout this Sun” – perhaps articulates not only a universal Christian faith and,
\nmore specifically, Vaughan’s defiant Anglicanism, but also the hope that his
\nvolume might in every sense shine.
\nAs though to enforce that image, we are greeted in 1655 in the first four or
\nfive poems of Silex Scintillans II with a great burst of light. No less revealing,
\nhowever, is the Silex ‘Dedication’ (R, pp. 145-6). For its composition straddles
\ntwo dates: in 1650 only the first stanza appeared, to which two more were
\nadded for the 1655 publication. These additions were obviously written in the
\nknowledge (looking back) of what he had accomplished in Silex Scintillans I.
\nThe poet is relieved – “Dear Lord, ’tis finished!” – and grateful:<\/p>\n From thee it shined, …
\nNor, can I say, this is mine
\nFor, dearest Jesus, ’tis all thine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n And whereas stanza one offers the book as “thy death’s fruits”, and is altogether
\napprehensive, dark, broken, stormy, it gives way in t wo and three to a shining.
\nThe tone becomes intimate, affectionate, confident, ebullient almost. No longer
\na fearful tenant paying his rent, Vaughan is a writer – “he\/That copied it” –
\nand a poet who has put behind him “every published vanity”. This is both a
\ngesture of self-effacement and a claim to attention, bestowing moral\/spiritual
\nvalue on the poems that follow. A cynical observer might call it “backing into
\nthe limelight”. But the reformed poet, while asserting his book’s worth, insists
\nthat its virtues are reflections – “dearest Jesus, ’tis all thine”. So, however
\ngenuinely humble and contrite he is, Henry Vaughan can present Silex
\nScintillans as a “candle shining on some heads” – a beacon of light in a dark
\nworld. It is that confidence, that sense of being a “sharer in [Christ’s] victory”
\nthat launches the poet in Silex II into ‘Ascension Day’ (R, pp.2 43-4):<\/p>\n I soar and rise
\nUp to the skies,
\nLeaving the world their day,
\nAnd in my \u00a3light,
\nFor the true light
\nGo seeking all the way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n “Seeking”, of course, was much in vogue among separatists when Vaughan
\nwrote that; but while engaging with an impulse natural to Christians in the
\nwilderness (of whom in the 1650’s he was emphatically one}, he pointedly
\nlocates “the true light” in the festivals (and doctrines) of the uprooted Anglican
\nChurch. This tradition, not some wholly spontaneous, inward motion of the
\nspirit, informs his proclamation “The day star smiles, and light . . .\/Now
\nshines in all the chambers of the east”. This, not some unverifiable rapture,
\nauthorises his claim on this day to “walk the fields of Bethany which shine”. It
\nunderwrites his ‘Ascension Hymn’ (R, pp. 245-6) which follows:<\/p>\n Man of old
\nWithin the line
\nOf Eden could
\nLike the sun shine
\nAll naked, innocent and bright,
\nAnd intimate with Heaven, as light;
\n…………..
\nThen comes he!
\nWhose mighty light
\nMade his clothes be
\nLike Heaven, all bright.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n This amounts, however, to something more than mere routine rehearsal: for
\nthe ‘Hymn’ closes on one of the most miraculous images of transformation in
\nall Vaughan. Seven words capture the instant when substance becomes essence.
\nWe see the “clay ascend more quick than light.” It is a moment of remarkable
\nintuition and – witness the play on “quick” – of inspired verbal dexterity that
\ninstantaneously charge the language. Suddenly, (in that fleeting fusion which is
\nlike one of those unpredictable, inexplicable, mysterious metamorphoses that
\nalchemists – amazed – observed) we know that in our universe natural and
\nsupernatural knit.
\nThe elegiac ‘They are all gone into the world of light!’ (R, pp. 246-7) immediately
\nfollowing, is not bereft of light but shaded by a sense of distance from
\nthe full effulgence: “I see them walking in an air of glory\/Whose light doth
\ntrample on my days”. Illumination, now muted,<\/p>\n … glows and glitters in my cloudy breast
\nLike stars upon some gloomy grove,
\nOr those faint beams in which this hill is dressed,
\nAfter the sun’s remove.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Now it is death that seems “beauteous . . .\/Shining nowhere, but in the dark”.
\nThose, like Vaughan, left behind, can only “into glory peep”; while beyond the
\ntomb the once captive soul can “shine through all the sphere.” ‘White Sunday’
\n(R, pp. 247-9) similarly reminds the reader in the natural world that if with us
\nnight follows day, the light of Whitsun “shines to eternity”. The poet will never
\nconsent<\/p>\n To leave those skies,
\nThat glass of souls and spirits, where well dressed
\nThey shine in white (like stars) and rest.
\n(‘The Proffer’, R, p. 250)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n And even in the natural world, Vaughan typically insists in ‘Cock Crowing’,
\n(R, pp. 251-2), God’s creatures manifest the tendency towards the light:<\/p>\n Their little grain expelling night
\nSo shines and sings, as if it knew
\nThe path unto the house of light.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n “But brush.me”, he prays, “with thy light, that I \/ May shine unto a perfect day,
\n\/And warm me at thy glorious Eye!” Or jump to ‘Quickness’ (R, pp. 307-8)
\nwhere<\/p>\n Life is a fixed, discerning light,
\nA knowing joy;
\nNo chance, or fit: but ever bright,
\n‘Tis such a blissful thing, that still
\nDoth vivify,
\nAnd shine and smile …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n There seems no end to this string of images.<\/p>\n Some “toilsome” counting, however (after the “toilsome mole” in ‘Quickness’),
\nyields a more precise and interesting result. Setting aside, for the moment, the
\nword “light” itself and associated words like “bright”, “beames”, “gleam”,
\n“glimmer”, “glitter”, and “sparkle”, the word “shine” occurs in one form or
\nanother (“shined”, “shining” and so forth) some 27 times in Silex l’s 97 pages,
\nand 40 times in Silex ll’s 70 pages. Or, to put it another way, it figures 27 times
\nin 3074 lines and 40 times in 2173 lines, respectively. Statistics are not everything,
\nand reading poetry is not (unless you are far-gone in numerology) an essentially
\nmathematical experience. But that distribution is striking – not least because
\nit seems to run counter to Stevie Davies’ observation that Silex II is more sombre
\nthan Silex 1.2 In broad terms, moreover, the figures sit quite comfortably with
\nE.C.Pettet’s conclusion that Vaughan’s is a “light-obsessed imagination”.’
\nWhat price, then, Jonathan Post’s contrary definition of Vaughan as a “poet
\nof darkness”? The seeming discrepancy demands resolution.<\/p>\n Let me summon that opening image once more:<\/p>\n I saw Eternity the other night
\nLike a great Ring of pure and endless light
\nAll calm, as it was bright
\n(‘The World (I)’, R, p. 227)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n This time we may remark not just that the light belongs, by right of rhyme, to
\nthe night, but also that it does not endure in what follows. In the twinkling of
\nan eye we descend headlong, “hurled”, into Time. It is the sphere of doting
\nlovers and darksome statesmen; a place of perjurers, of blood and tears; the
\nlair of the fearful miser on his heap of rust; a den of thieves and frantic greed,
\nof destructive self-indulgence by rich and poor alike. The descent is distressing
\nand, when not overlooked, has been held against the poet. No rapt visionary
\nabove it all, no luminous seer, no echt-Celtic mystic should talk like this. If for
\na moment we seemed to hear a poet singing – to borrow Ben Jonson’s phrase
\n– high and aloof, we are rapidly disillusioned.
\nNor does the voice exactly chime with Canon Allchin’s reflection on
\nVaughan’s “choice of a life of retirement in the country”;’ or with Stevie<\/p>\n [2] Henry Vaughan, Bridgend, 1995, p. 159; cf. Post, op. cit., p. 199, likewise observing that in<\/span>
\nSilex II Vaughan “becomes a p oet of the invading darkness”.<\/span>
\n[3] Of Paradise and Light. A Study of Vaughan’s “‘Silex Scintillans”, Cambridge, 1960, p. 157.<\/span>
\n[4] ‘As if Existence Itself were Heavenliness’, Scintilla 2, Cardiff, 1998, p. 40.<\/span><\/p>\nDavies’ reminder that in ‘To the River !sea’ in Olor lscanus Vaughan “praises
\na backwater and hopes to keep it so”. Coming home from the wars (in defeat
\nand withdrawal from the world of Oxford and London ambitions, duly
\nbanished, like all Cavaliers, from the city, and forced back, like it or not, into
\nthe provinces) he rejoiced (R, p. 72) in “The land redeemed from all disorders”.
\nThat mood could not last long. He soon found, as Stevie Davies goes on, that
\nthe river flowed “into even deeper areas of churning uncertainry”.5 And it was
\nprecisely his painful honesty in confronting that turmoil (within and without)
\nthat made Henry Vaughan a true poet.
\nYet Vaughan’s biographer, F. E. Hutchinson,’ rather felt that he should have
\nkept his hands clean and his eyes heavenwards. Those descents, sudden shifts
\nand oscillations his poetry is full of – that broken style he regarded as a sign
\nof its truthfulness – seemed to Hutchinson a blemish. As for his disconcerting
\nanger, the kind of outburst we face in stanza four of ‘The World (I)’,<\/p>\n 0 fools (said I) thus to prefer dark night
\nBefore true light,
\nTo live in grots, and caves, and hate the day
\nBecause it shows the way,
\n(R, p. 248)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n he should have known better, kept himself more in hand. The truth, however,
\nis that in Vaughan, as in Milton, a sharp, indignant, critical-satiric edge is
\nalways at the ready. And it is a strength, not a distraction, for it guards his
\npoetry against evaporating into self-deceiving raptures. It constitutes a centre
\nof resistance to the kind of unmediated, self-indulgent, often affected rhapsodic
\neffusions all too prevalent in mid-century. “I envy not”, he wrote in The Mount
\nof Olives, “their frequent Extasies, and raptures to the third Heaven. I only
\nwish them real”.7 ‘The World’ does not fail, fall off, lose pitch, direction and
\ncontrol. Rather it rings uncomfortably true – and not just to the way the poet
\nfelt, but also to the way the world was, and is for us “in the flesh”, as he put it.
\nThe difficulty for the poet lay, as Vaughan observed, in producing a voice tuned
\nto the catastrophe, collisions, discords, disjunctions and disharmonies of the
\ntimes. This has been the problem, writ large, of twentieth century poetry; and
\nIt brings Vaughan closer to us. We ought to be able to understand and value<\/p>\n [5] Op. cit., p. 74.<\/span>
\n[6] Henry Vaughan: A Life and Interpretation, Oxford, 1971 (1947).<\/span>
\n[7] The Woms of Henry Vaughan, ed. L. C. Martin, 2nd. ed., Oxford, 1957 (1914), p. 140. Further<\/span>
\nVaughan prose quotations are from this edition, referenced M in the text.<\/span><\/p>\nthose honest “failures” when his feelings of anger, frustration, doubt and
\ndespair, of alienation and isolation intervene to change the course and outcome
\nof a poem. At the same time we need to listen with him for those other
\nredeeming intimations, interjections from nature and Scripture. So in ‘The
\nWorld (I)’ in the midst of denouncing (he uses the word “discuss”!) the
\n“madness” of those who “prefer dark night\/Before true light” he hears a whispering
\nvoice:<\/p>\n This ring the bride-groom did for none provide
\nBut for his bride.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n That puts the complaining poet (with his righteous anger and contempt) in
\nhis place, even as it circles back to the poem’s opening. So the “endless light”
\nis not abandoned, blotted out. Indeed, the poem insists that “some, who all this
\nwhile did weep and sing\/And sing, and weep, soared up into the Ring”; but
\nequally it concludes (against the grain of much excited millenarianism of the
\ntime) that there can be no basking in that glory here and now, in “this dead and
\ndark abode”. The message is uncompromising: you may glimpse “Eternity”, but
\nyou cannot, in the world, be in it; and you certainly cannot enter into it save
\nthrough the good offices of His Church.
\nCasting an eye back over all those shinings, we see time and again this kind
\nof undercutting, qualification, or careful placing. Here the shining belongs
\nexplicitly to the resurrected body. There it is feeble or intermittent, and con\u00b7
\ntrasted with “that mighty, and eternal light\/Where no rude shade, or night!
\nShall dare approach us”. (‘Resurrection and Immortality’, R, p. 153). Or there
\nagain it is no more than “Weak beams, and fires flashed to my sight\/Like a
\nyoung east, or moon-shine night”; and then “That little light I had was gone”
\n(‘Vanity of Spirit’, R, p. 172). You begin to see what Jonathan Post means.
\nSilex is not a volume flooded with light, but what it calls itself – a book of
\nscintillations! It is, by definition, at ‘Midnight'(R, pp. 174-5) that the scintil\u00b7
\nlacing “stars shine in their watches”. Vaughan wishes that his soul might shine
\nin this dark world with like ardour:<\/p>\n W hat emanations,
\nQuick vibrations
\nAnd bright stirs are there?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But on the ground where he stands all remains “slow motions”; and he can
\nonly hope God may “Shine on this blood.” He can rehearse a shining from the
\npast – from his own “Angel-infancy” (‘The Retreat’, R, pp. 172-3) or from the
\nprimitive Church and its Saints, or from before the Fall. Or he can envisage (as
\nin ‘Ascension-Hymn’, R, pp. 245-6) that shining to come (never to be dimmed)
\nwhen Christ comes once more – maybe very soon – this time in glory. In
\n‘L’Envoy’ (R, pp. 311-3), anticipating the end, (his own death and the finale of
\nthe latter days) Vaughan anticipates the moment when Christ will<\/p>\n ………….. spread
\nThy own bright self over each head,
\nTill all becomes thy cloudless glass,
\n……….
\nTransparent as the purest day
\nAnd without blemish or decay.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n He may have flirted with the Behmenist idea (in the second stanza of ‘Ascension
\nHymn’) that “some” might “Walk to the sky” before death: the notion fell into
\nplace in that piece. But that arcanum is the exception that proves the rule; and
\nhe swiftly returns to the fact that fallen man in the flesh can only be resurrected
\nby Christ’s “all subduing might” at the Second Coming. Meanwhile (‘L’Envoy’,
\nR, p. 312) the faithful must “gladly sit\/Till all be ready … ”
\nIt could be any day now! By then of course (late 1654) the “tempo of
\nhistory”, as Post puts it, had stepped up. “A clear recognition” was abroad “of
\nworldly time as winding down with startling speed”.8 In Silex II Judgement
\nDay was no longer, as in Silex I, to be contemplated from afar. The uprooting
\nof Church and State from 1649 onwards, and the political and religious
\nwilderness of the early 1650’s looked increasingly like that prophesied desolation
\nbefore renovation that ardent millenarianism preached. So, to some, the
\ndarker the better! In Silex II the rising expectation and the deepening dark are
\npalpable. In the “last and lewdest age” (‘White Sunday’, R, p. 248) Henry
\nVaughan, “always a poet:\u00b7of darkness”, becomes “a poet of invading darkness” .9
\nThat seems a strange thing to say of the second phase of Silex which,
\nstatistically, shines more than ever bright. But the way the sequence actually
\nunfolds on the page confirms the description. After the opening blaze of
\n‘Ascension Day’ and ‘Ascension Hymn’, followed by ‘They are all gone’ and
\n“W hite Sunday”, ‘The Proffer’ (R, pp. 249-50) – with its “black parasites”, its
\n“poisonous, subtle fowls!\/The flies of hell”, its defiant “I’ll not stuff my story\/
\nWith your Commonwealth and glory”, and the parting advice “Spit out their
\nphlegm” – sharply lowers the tone. ‘Cock Crowing’ (R, pp. 251-2) once more<\/p>\n [8] Op. cit., p. 198.<\/span>
\n[9] Ibid., p. 199.<\/span><\/p>\nconjures up the light – this time shining through the natural world as the poet
\ngreets the dawn. Vaughan believed that the night “suppled” (‘Mount of Olives’,
\nM, p. 143) the hardness we contract through the day: for him it was the
\n“deepest and smoothest current of time”, and precious for the chance it gives
\nus to observe and meditate the stars – those “beautiful luminaries of the night”
\n(Ibid., p. 187), and so discern the whole ebb and flow of the cosmos. And the
\ntimes when dark and light meet (at dusk and at dawn) were for him moments
\nof marvellous mystery. But the dawn was his favourite time. It was when he
\nhabitually walked up the slope above Newton Farm to catch the new day, and
\nwould not have been surprised, one fine and everlasting morning, to see Christ
\nblazing up over the horizon:<\/p>\n Thou’lt find me dressed and on my way,
\nWatching the break of thy great day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n That, of course, comes from ‘The Dawning’ (R, p. 211) in Silex I. In Silex II (the
\nlater part of which was written when the poet thought he would die before the
\nSecond Coming anyhow) there is less getting up with the sun, and more
\nimagery of evening than before. So after ‘Cock Crowing’ the shining rapidly
\nbecomes more intermittent, clouded, fleeting.
\n‘T he Palm Tree’, ‘The Garland’, ‘Love-Sick’, ‘Trinity Sunday’, and ‘Psalm 104’
\n(R, pp. 253-60) variously bring us down to earth, insisting on terrestrial nature.
\nNot that the natural world is to be despised: in ‘The Bird’ (R, pp. 260-1) “hills
\nand valleys into singing break”, and there is brightness. But the very next poem,
\n‘Timber’ (R, pp. 261-3) abruptly presents a dead tree, where birds once lived,
\nleafless now; and desolation is all around,<\/p>\n …… all senseless, cold and dark;
\nWhere not so much as dreams of light may shine,
\nNor any thought of greenness, leaf or bark.
\n(R, p. 262)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Our way now lies “through deserts and wild woods”; only death offers “a clear
\nspring”. To be detained on earth, “dead unto the world”, is hateful – nothing
\nbut tears and grief. And though ‘Palm Sunday’ (R, pp. 266-7) momentarily lifts
\nthe mood – “Angels shine and sing\/In a bright ring” – it is overtaken by ‘Jesus
\nWeeping (I)’, a bleak, almost bitter reflection on the state of the nation in an
\n“unkind”, ungrateful time. So the sequence progressively enters a darker mode
\nand world. Yet as it does so a paradox begins to coalesce in images of “A grid
\nthat shall outshine all joys” and “A grief so brightl’Twill make the land of
\ndarkness light”. (‘Jesus Weeping (I)’, R, p. 270). When ‘The Rainbow’ (R, pp.
\n275-6) shines “darkness looks white and fair”; and it becomes both a bright
\npledge of peace and a dark reminder of Judgement Day. It is in ‘The Night’
\n(R, pp. 289-90), however, that Vaughan finally resolves the conundrum posed by
\nhis experience of a world where daytime darkens and dark mysteries illuminate.
\nIn Nicodemus he found the figure he needed:<\/p>\n Who in that land of darkness and blind eyes
\nThy long expected healing wings could see,
\nAnd what can never more be done,
\nDid at mid-night speak with the Sun!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n As for himself, the poet is full of “loud, evil days”,<\/p>\n . .. living where the sun
\nDoth all things wake, and where all mix and tire
\nThemselves and others, I consent and run
\nTo every mire,
\nAnd by this world’s ill-guiding light,
\nErr more than I can do by night.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Far better seek that “Dear night! this world’s defeat;\/. . .\/God’s silent, searching
\nflight”.
\nIn another of those astonishing moments of fusion and transformation,
\nwhere natural and supernatural meet, the dilemma is dissolved: “There is in
\nGod (some say)\/A deep but dazzling darkness.” The instant of eye-opening
\nmetamorphosis (rooted in Biblical revelation) touches alchemical perceptions
\ntoo. A New Light of Alchemie, June 26, 1656, talks (translating a 1604
\noriginal) of “that light and fire which is the throne of God’s Mystery”
\nconcealed “in nocturnal darknesse”. Thomas Vaughan, in Au\/a Lucis, 1651,
\nretails a trismegistian experiment in which first a “gladsome Light” appears,
\nonly for a “horrible sad Darknesse” to move “downe-wards from the Eye of
\nthe Light” precipitating a final blackness.10 One hardly needs to labour
\nalchemists’ preoccupation with an ”Aethereal substance that retaines Light”,
\nor with the mystery of the relationship of light to darkness (both being
\nproperties of the Creator) and of how one is brought out of the dther. Indeed,<\/p>\n [10] The Works of Thomas Vaughan, ed. Alan Rudrum with Jennifer Drake-Brockman, Oxford,<\/span>
\n1984, p. 469<\/span><\/p>\nthere are times when the operator, distilling primal substances, seems to be
\ntrying to replicate in the laboratory the process of creation described in
\nGenesis. Henry Vaughan, even if not involved in experimentation, was steeped
\nin the language of these alchemical preoccupations and processes.
\nNot that alchemists had a monopoly of this engagement with the processes
\nof light and dark – witness Laurence Clarkson’s pamphlet of October 4, 1650,
\nA Single Eye, all Light, no Darkness, or Light and Darkness One. Clarkson, as
\nthe title reveals, insists that light and dark are not essentially unconnected
\nopposites. So, observing (as many another did) the “dark mists … spread over
\nall opinions in the Kingdom”, he interprets them prophetically as a sign that
\nthe time is at hand when God “will make darkness Light”. But for him (and he
\nwas, of course, anything but run-of-the-mill) the “Power of Light “and the
\n“Power of Darkness” both, though the latter is not God, emanate from God.
\nVaughan would certainly not have swallowed Clarkson’s conclusion that all
\nthings we call “dark” (like adultery, swearing, drunkenness) are really “light” if
\nenacted in purity. But the rapturist’s argument that darkness is “nothing but
\nlight from God”, that Light and Dark “have but one womb, one birth” and are
\n“both Twins, both brethren” – that would surely have struck a chord with
\nHenry and Thomas! We have reached the point where there is no separating
\nLight from Dark. Post and Pettet are both right.<\/p>\n II:\u00a0‘SILEX SCINTILLANS’ AND THE WAR OF WORDS<\/h4>\nHenry Vaughan, who both sought the light and longed for “chat night! where I
\nin him\/Might live invisible and dim” (‘The Night, R, p. 290), was not afraid to
\nlook the darkness of the times in the face. “The Night” makes no more division
\nbetween the poet and contemporary corruption than “The World” did. He
\npresents himself as thoroughly implicated in the chaos of the present –
\ninescapably involved. Vaughan was too unself-indulgent, too rigorous to
\nimagine he could live in an “O Altitudo”. Maybe “The Night” is, as Post
\nsuggests, the nearest Vaughan comes to a rapture,” but it is not quite that.
\nHowever much its imagery owes to alchemical arcana or occult conceptions,
\nthe poem stubbornly, and significantly, refuses to endorse Jacob Boehme’s
\nbelief 12 that “the sun will shine on the children at Midnight”. There was only<\/p>\n [11] Op. cit., pp. 201 & 207.<\/span>
\n[12] The Three Principles of the Divine Essence, 1648, cited in R, p. 627, note to 11.7-12 of ‘The<\/span>
\nNight’.<\/span><\/p>\none Nicodemus as far as Henry was concerned. As for rising above his times
\nor withdrawing into quietism, Silex Il’s Preface asserts the opposite. Indeed,
\nits attack on corrupt literature might have been designed to steal Puritan
\nthunder. Vaughan was determined, palpably, to answer the Angel’s call (in
\n“Corruption”, R, p. 197): “Arise! Thrust in thy sickle”. Simply scanning the
\nThomason Tracts Collection of Civil War pamphlets, tracts, treatises, newsbooks
\netc.13 gives us some sense of the clatter of contemporary confusion to
\nbe engaged with. For however much Vaughan’s poetry took shape and served
\nas personal therapy or private meditation, Silex was designed, like the forms
\nof prayer proferred in The Mount of Olives, to be “as useful now in the public
\nas it hath been to me in private” (R, p. 142). It was essentially an activist
\npublication.
\nSilex as a whole constitutes a sustained, deliberate, even calculated engagement
\nwith current concerns and contentions. The obsession with light and dark
\nthat fills its pages is anything but peculiar to Vaughan. Even that memorable,
\nquasi-mystical metaphor fusing darkness and light, at one level meets current
\nsectarian discourse head-on. A random string of Thomason titles from 1650-2
\nmakes the point:<\/p>\n March 23, 1650, A Holy Lamp of Light: Discovering the Fallacious
\nallegorising of Scriptures; April 1, A Voyage out of the Thick Darkness;
\nMay 22, Light OT Darknesse; June 26, A New Light of Alchemie;
\nOctober 4, A Single Eye all Light, no Darkness; OT Light and Darkness
\none; October 29, Light Vanquishing DaTknesse; November 20, The Light
\nand Dark Sides of God; February 18, 1651, The Light Appearing More
\nand More; March 1, Divine Beames of Glorious Light; March 11, Lux
\nVeritatis; May 2, Lux Veritatis; January 14, 1652 Aula Lucis.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n A far richer crop is to be gleaned from 1654\/5 (of which more anon), but this
\nhandful serves its turn. Sometimes, as in A Holy Lamp of Light, the text does
\nnot rehearse or explore the imagery of the tide which is there simply to catch
\nthe eye. Sometimes, however, there is more within. Here is Isaac Penington (in
\nLight or Darknesse, May 22, 1650) bewailing “so much deadness, so much
\ndarkness, such a veil over the heart, and over the Scriptures” in this “darkeclipsed-
\nMoon-light … Now there is a gasping after more Light, more discoveries
\nof God”. Now, he writes, “after so much expectation of Light and
\nGlory, of Settlement and Establishment in the things of God, such thick
\nDarkness, …such dreadful shatterings. have so apparently overtaken us, and<\/p>\n [13] G. K. Fortescue, Catalogue of the Thomason Tracts, 1640-1662, 2 vols., 1908.<\/span><\/p>\nare so likely dayly more to overtake us … our very Foundation is shaken …
\neverything is darkness, death, emptines, vanity, a lye”. And “the Light of Man,
\nwhile it seems to shine with clearness and perspicacity about it, doth but darken
\nit … The Light of man is but darkness before God, and the casting abroad of
\nthis light is but scattering darkness about God, which although it cannot darken
\nGod in himself, yet it may, and doth, darken him to those to whom it seems to
\nreveal him, though they perceive it not, but think they have attained some light
\nof God by it . . . I see what a dark blind buzzard I was in the midst of my
\nconfidence, concerning mine own clear eye-sight .. . 0 GOD, what a state are
\nthings in!”
\nHere is the nub of the matter – men (and women) actively, even desperately
\nseeking light in a time of unprecedented confusion in a world turned upside
\ndown. But how to know who had the light, or what it was, or where it was to
\nbe found? Alexander Griffiths in his 1654 attack on Vavasor Powell raises these
\nvery issues. 14 Some thought Powell possessed a “double light of Doctrine and
\nWorks which hath shined amongst us”; but to Griffiths he was a creature of
\nthe power of darkness. Time and again texts grapple with the difficulty of
\ndeciding whether one is dealing with an Angel of Light or of Darkness when,
\nas one puts it, “the darkness and the light are both alike, and where the Night
\nshineth as the day”.’ 5
\nIt was all very well for Penington to argue “This is light indeed, that can
\nmake darkness shine in its own brightness”. The words are magical: they weave
\ntheir spell. But they are essentially unsubstantiated. The difficulty of knowing
\nwhether one is truly illumined or benighted, that is to say deceived or selfdeceived
\nremains. Penington’s solution – which eventually led him to turn
\nQuaker – was to search for something “I would faine finde within”. That,
\nhowever, simply begs questions that Vaughan, like a dog with a bone, would
\nnot let go. He brought not only an intense self-scrutiny but also an intent
\nobservation of natural phenomena and scriptural perspectives to focus on the
\nconundrum. Anyhow, one begins to see what Silex Scintillans was disputing.
\nThe Puritans had outfought the orthodox, hi-jacked their authority and the
\nvocabulary of spiritual and moral power. Vaughan’s poetry is designed, not
\nleast, to challenge possession of that idiom. Far from lying low, keeping his
\ncounsel (as many Cavaliers did) the defiant Silurist stood his ground, fought
\nback. Defeated, bereaved, broken, he too spoke, as many of the godly did,
\nfrom the heart of a wilderness experience. (16)<\/p>\n [14] Strena Vavasoriensis, repr. Cardiff, Cymdeithas Lien Cymru Ill, 1915.<\/span>
\n[15] Pennington, Loe. cit.<\/span>
\n[16] “. .. the waste and howling Wildernesse” is his phrase in The Mount of Olives in M, p. 138.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n THE ITINERANTS<\/h4>\nThere was certainly no shortage of light-mongers in Wales – zealous, like
\nWalter Cradock , to prosecute a “reall reformation”. He conjured up (Divine
\nDrops, December 21, 1649) a scene of disputatious, divisive times, full of confusion,
\nbacksliding, and “hardness of heart” against the “saints”. Even among
\nthose who so styled themselves there was, he asserted, much “tuchiness” and
\nContradiction.T he very word “saint” was, of course, not least among the treasures
\nhi-jacked; and Vaughan’s reaction was typically tart: “Who saint themselves,
\nthey are no saints” was the trenchant closure of his celebration of St.
\nMary Magdalen. All too evidently, contemporaries claiming sanctity were, “if
\nwe compare the shining and fervent piety of those Saints [of the primitive
\nChurch], with the painted and illuding appeareance of it in these our times”
\n(M, p. 181), mere deluded tricksters.17 And to call onself “saint” in Wales of all
\nplaces! Here the very place-names witnessed to the ancient reverence for
\nsainthood and, of course, to the openness to the supernatural in Celtic culture.
\nIt may have been shrewd of Puritans to style themselves the “Welsh Saints” as
\nCradock did addressing Cromwell in 1652.’1 But for Vaughan those churchclosers
\nhad made a mockery of the term. They had dislodged the true Saints,
\nand broken the living link with that ancient apostolic Christianity uniquely
\nembodied in the Welsh Church. That breaking shook Vaughan to his roots.
\nHe was, of course, in no position (even had he so wanted) to overlook the
\ndamage done. Living a few miles from Brecon he was in the thick of it – a man
\nunder siege. Denunciation was not, however, the sum of his response: redefinition
\nand reclamation were central to his strategy. So in ‘L’Envoy’ at the
\nvery end of Silex II he not only rehearses his ‘Anglican’ idiom, but also steals
\nPuritan clothes. Just as, throughout, he assimilates and reapplies beloved
\nHerbert’s words, images, and techniques, so here he borrows boldly from his
\nfoes:<\/p>\n … then give thy saints
\nThat faithful zeal, which neither faints
\nNor wildly burns, but meekly still
\nDares own the truth, and show the ill.
\n(R, p. 312)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n [17] Vaughan’s acclamation of the Anglican Royalist divine and poet William Cartwright as a<\/span>
\n“great Saint” in the posthumous 1651 edition of the latter’s works was similarly pqinted.<\/span>
\n[18] Geoffrey F. Nuttall, The Welsh Saints, 1640-1660, 1957, p. 2.<\/span><\/p>\n“Own”, while signifying profession and confession, is also just the word for
\nthis act of repossession. Perhaps, as some suggest, the poet recognised (while
\nabhorring their iconocla sm and vandalism) that there was something in Puritan
\nzeal and spirituality (at its best} that could not be ignored. Certainly, as the 1655
\nPreface to Silex discloses, he did not overlook or dismiss the challenge of its
\nclaims and reforming efforts. On the contrary, he sharply distances himself
\nfrom corrupt literature of various kinds – and in language that would have
\ndone any earnest Puritan credit. Interestingly, he does not attack the godly
\nenemy, but “idle books”, “vicious verse”, “lascivious fictions” and publications
\nstuffed with “gross and studied filthiness.” He even has a bad word for translations
\nof foreign romances then in vogue. The poet recants his own worldly
\nverses; he calls his new poems “hymns”, talking of “true holyness” and “true
\npractick piety”. The Dedication to Christ and the prayer for the deliverance of
\n“all penitent and reformed Spirits” sound calculated (which is not to say they
\nare insincere) to attract readers hungry for reform, seeking the light. All in all,
\nVaughan’s tone is combative, polemical: he writes as though competing for
\nconverts. Of course, the poetry that follows is a richer, more varied discourse;
\nbur it certainly does not eschew polemic. Plainly, the collection was designed
\nnot just to comfort the defeated faithful, but also to dispute the high moral
\nground in resonantly current and potent language.
\nIf lines like “Who saint themselves, they are no saints” were calculated to
\nrattle some cages, the 1655 Dedication to “To Jesus Christ .. . , and the Sacred
\nVirgin Mary” was even more provocative. A red rag to bulls like Vavasor Powell!
\nHe had complained in 1654 that “Superstition and Poper y is already Crept in
\namong us – as is sensibly discovered by three parishes in Brecknockshire”;”
\nand a Breconshire minister likewise lamented the daily relapsing of “many dry
\nand thirsty souls .. . into Popery, and that in no small numbers” .]J) Walker’s
\nreckoning (in The History of the Sufferings of the Clergy, 1714) that after the
\nejection of the established clergy under the notorious Act for the Propagation
\nof the Gospel in 1649 “many hundreds [in Wales] were converted to Popery”21
\nmay not be far from the mark. People preferred, he dryly observed, “to go to
\nRo me than to Bedlam” – and this “particularly in Breconshire”.
\nThe hated Propagation Act, fronted by Vavasour Powell, the “Metropolitan
\nof the Itinerants” ,22 may have missed its aim of real reformation; but it seems<\/p>\n [19] Thomas Richards, Religious Developments in Wales (1654-1662), 1923, p. 295; hereafter<\/span>
\nreferenced R.D. in the text.<\/span>
\n[20] Gwenllian Morgan, St. Andrews Magazine, March, 1903, quoted in Michael R. Lewis,<\/span>
\nFrom Darkness to Light. The Catholics of Breconshire 1531-1851, Abertillery, 1992, p. 30.<\/span>
\n[21] Quoted in Michael R. Lewis, loc. cit.<\/span>
\n[22] So-called on the title-page of Strena Vavasoriensis, ed. cit.<\/span><\/p>\nto have left a trail of empty churches, silent pulpits, and resentful parishes
\nbehind it. Over seven hundred were left without regular clergy; and in 1652
\nSouth Wales was driven to petitioning for “a supply of ministers” .23 And the
\nAct was nowhere prosecuted so vigorously, ruthlessly even, as in Wales – that
\ndarkest corner of the land. Here Powell (that “base and violent man” according
\nto one opponent, who allegedly threatened one parish that the War horses
\nshould wade up to the reins of their bridles in the blood of the said Parishioners
\nwho had “dared oppose the Saints”) commanded the field.2
\n\u2022 Certainly he was
\nimmensely energetic and confrontational, ranging over Brecknock, Radnor,
\nand Montgomery, riding sometimes 100 miles a week, preaching two or three
\ntimes a day, so that there were rarely two days a week ye ar round when he was
\nnot in the pulpit somewhere – at “Fairs, Markets, or any great concourse of
\nPeople” (H.P., pp. 146-7). Lesser lights aided and abetted – like Walter Cradock
\nfrom Cardiff who roamed as far North as Presteign; or Richard Powell,
\nturncoat vicar of Llangattock and Crickhowell, and one of the Approvers for
\nthe Propagation Act, who made Brecon his base for sallies into Herefordshire
\n(R.C., pp. 21, 385; H.P., p. 146). Some fifty godly members of the gathered
\nChurches at Llanvaches in Monmouthshire and Mynyddyslwyn in Breconshire
\nwent out preaching, “mostly among the Welsh”, in the highlands of Monmouth
\nand Brecon (R.D., pp. 196, 203). One of them, Edmund Ros ser, was known
\nlocally as (H.P., p. 150; R.D., p. 197) the “preacher in the Mountains”.
\nWas there no escaping these reformers? We are told that “not a single
\nItinerant Minister” found his way to Llansantfraed (H.P., p. 157); but these
\n“runners”, as they were sarcastically dubbed in Brecon and Radnor, can never
\nhave been far away. And one of them based in Breconshire, Jenkin John Howell
\n(alias Captain Jenkin Jones) had at his command 120 horses, with men, arms
\nand ammunition to match25 They were an unignorable presence. Their shortcomings,
\nhowever, in the eyes of men and women accustomed to an orthodox,
\neducated clergy were legion. As often as not they were “unlettered”; and even
\nWilliam Erbery,26 “one of the supreme Itinerants of the Age”, was critical of
\ntheir ignorance; they will end up, he prophesied, running out of Church and
\nCountry! (H.P., p. 156) Naturally, Cradock and Powell defended their agents
\nstoutly; but in the end Cromwell himself had had enough of their busybodying
\nintolerance . The 1654 appointment of “Triers” for England and Wales
\neffectively closed the Itinerant system down. (H.P., pp. 157-8) So ended the
\nfirst wave of Government sponsored root-and-branch reform in Wales.<\/p>\n [23] Thomas Richards, A History of the Puritan Movement in Wales, 1920, p. 157; hereafter<\/span>
\nreferenced H.P. in the text.<\/span>
\n[24] Strena Vavasorienses, ed. cit., p. 20.<\/span>
\n[25] Ibid., p. 12.<\/span>
\n[26] Christine Trevett, “William Erbery and his Daughter Dorcas : Dissenter and Resurrected<\/span>
\nRadical”, The journal of Welsh Religious History, vol.4 (1996), 23-50, provides an account of<\/span>
\nErbcry’s activities and influence in South Wales that helps our understanding of Vaughan’s position<\/span>
\nvis-a-vis the Itinerants and the Quakers who followed in their footsteps.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n THE QUAKERS<\/h4>\nThen the Quakers came! Or rather, they began to appear in Wales a year or so
\nbefore the Itinerants were sidelined. The first two missionaries from George
\nFox’s new movement travelled to Wrexham in October 1653 – not on the back
\nof an Act of Parliament but through the combination of Morgan Llwyd’s
\ninterested enquiries about them in 1652 and Fox’s indefatigable evangelising
\n(R.D., pp. 243-4). There was no love lost between Propagators and Quakers
\nwho agreed that Wales was a “dark corner of the land” (R.D., p. 253) but
\nroundly denounced the pride, envy and covetousness, and claims to sanctity of
\nthe commissars. Vavasour Powell’s supporters in return boasted (in 1654 when
\nthe first flying column of the Quaker crusade was approaching South Wales)
\nthat he had “carried the flag” away from these “Daemoniacks”(R.D., p. 241).
\nTwo years later, in July, a general meeting of the Baptists of Brecon, where
\nQuakerism had a growing following, denounced the new “Infection”(R.D., p.
\n262). It was, they fulminated in a telling phrase (R.D., p. 250) nothing but
\n“Sa than transferring himself into an Angell of Light”.
\nIf Quakers were too much for the Baptists, they must have been anathema
\nto Henry Vaughan. Theirs was, to put it mildly, a provocative agenda: denying
\noriginal sin; asserting inherent righteousness and the indwelling spirit of light
\nmaking men perfectly holy; rejecting baptism and any kind of outward or
\nformal observances; ridiculing God’s sacred ordinances; showing open disrespect
\ntowards ministers and refusing to salute anybody; rejecting both humane
\nlearning and the literal interpretation of the Bible; and, not least, insisting on
\nthe light that “was before Scripture was given forth”27
\n, even that (as one put it
\nin 1656) the “Scriptures are dead”.28 Little wonder the godly felt as threatened
\n– “besieged” was the word one of the Brecon Baptists used – as Vaughan did.
\nIndeed, they too distrusted Quaker raptures as (R.D., p. 264) mere “wandering
\nfancies”.
\nFox for his part ridiculed separatist sectarianism as an enervating revival of<\/p>\n [27] George Fox, quoted in Christian Faith and Practice in the experience of the Society of<\/span>
\nFriends, 1972 (1960), extract 163.<\/span>
\n[28] Alexander Parker, A Testimony of God. July 14, 1656.<\/span><\/p>\nthe long-dead disputes of the primitive church. Quakerism’s freedom from
\ndoctrinal wrangling, the clarity and simplicity of its message, and its powerful
\ngospel of the indwelling light were understandably attractive amidst a dark
\nand disputatious decade. No wonder it won converts in Wales from among
\nBaptists, Seekers, Independents, and men and women of Arminian and of
\nCalvinist persuasion. Tellingly William Erbery’s daughter Dorcas – her father
\nhad made Cardiff fertile ground for Quakerism – went over to the Friends.
\nIndeed, she went so far as to accompany James Nayler on his notorious entry
\nas Christ into Bristol. (R.D., p. 264) Even Morgan Llwyd seems to have oscillated
\nbetween Bible-centred Puritanism and Quakerism. (R.D., pp. 244-5)
\nVaughan was no oscillator. He would surely have relished Cavalier Donald
\nLupton’s sarcasm (May 24 1655, The Quaking Mountebank) against Quakers’
\n“Murmurings, Trances . . . and Manifestations of Gods Spirit coming into
\nthem …” They wander about, he complains, crying “that all men want Light”;
\nbut “while they speak the Light they love the Dark, and their hauling in the
\nLight, of the Light, is enough to extinguish it”. What Vaughan had written in
\n1652 against extasies and raptures applied a fortiori to the latest visionaries.
\nBy 1655 there was emphatically no ignoring these Quakers: between July
\nand December some 45 pamphlets appeared, for and against the Children of
\nLight as the newcomers called themselves. The list ranges from Joseph
\nHarrison’s A_Glimpse of Divine Light, June 2, through Fox’s A Warning to
\nthe World that are Groping in the Dark, September 30, to A Warning from the
\nLord of December 29. It was a right royal battle of the preachers: a fight for
\nfollowers, for salvation by tract and pamphlet raged. And nothing was more
\nfiercely debated than the nature, location, and significance of the light so much
\ntalked of. In text after text “light” is a key word. There are sixteen “lights” and
\nthree “enlightens” in the first two-thirds of a page of Fox’s Truths Testimony
\nof March 3, 1655. Every sixth word on the first page of The Innocent Delivered,
\na defence of the Bristol Quakers published on April 9, 1655, is “light” or
\n“enlighteneth”. The word “light” threads its way through the fifty-nine pages
\nof Robert Farnworth’s The Brazen Serpent, April 7, 1655. Typically he asserts
\nthat “God is light, and in him is no darknesse at all”. Vaughan, as we have seen,
\nthought otherwise. Anyhow, Fox’s title of September 30, 1655, sums up the
\nscene: A Warning to the World That are groping in the dark after Sects,
\nOpinions, and Notions, which are all with the Light Condemned; And by the
\nChildren of Light Declared Against.<\/p>\n Setting Silex Scintillans II in this context, into which it was launched in
\n1655, is to see its procedures and patterns in (it has to be said) a new light. That
\nopening blaze of light in Silex II, for example, could be construed as pointedly
\nplaced to attract seekers after the light towards the true Church, now in the
\nwilderness, by celebrating events in the Christian Calendar that Quakers (and
\nmany among their immediate forerunners) had no time for. When that blaze
\nfades out, to return intermittently in flashes amidst the dark, demonstrating
\ninsistently that we cannot live permanently in the light in this world and that
\nthe light is not inherent, the implied rebuttal of Quaker claims is palpable.
\nCommentators who once saw (as some still do) Vaughan’s “descents” from
\nmoments of so-called mystical perception as failures of inspiration mistake the
\nman and his poetic strategies. Of course, like any poet he had his off moments;
\nbut essentially the “unevenesses” in the collection – those sudden shifts of level
\nand pitch, that coming and going of the “visionary gleam” – are calculated.
\nLike the 1650 Silex frontispiece, which designedly catches up key figurations
\nof current spiritual polemic, the body of the book is many-faceted, rough\u00b7
\nhewn, now catching the light, now sunk in shadow. The more closely one looks,
\nthe more one sees in the overall shifting, unfolding pattern of the volume that
\ncapacity so patent in the detailed manipulation of metre, rhyme and syntax –
\nVaughan’s control.<\/p>\n One hesitates to say of any true poet (in whose writing intuition plays a part,
\nand a power inherent in the language itself – its sound, weight and rhythm –
\nmakes itself felt) that everything is done by design. And there are certainly
\nmoments like that in Vaughan, of something special, when some complete
\nfelicity of phrase seems on the instant to be given. Nevertheless, he is also (as
\nhe must be if the language is to speak through him) calculatedly argumentative,
\na tough, combative controversialist, a sophisticated polemicist, an accomplished
\nrhetorician, and a consummate craftsman with designs on his readers. Take
\nthe closing run of poems in Silex II, from ‘The Waterfall’ through ‘Quickness’,
\n‘The Wreath’, ‘The Quer y’, ‘The Book’ , ‘To the Holy Bible’ co ‘L’Envoy’, the
\ntitle that closes the volume with a significantly literary flourish. As we read we
\nare progressively and firmly brought down to earth, to the natural material
\nthings that constitute us, to what “life is.” There is no more eloquent riposte
\nto all those rhapsodises deceiving themselves that man might somehow live in
\nthis world outside the body – like the ardent Quaker converts who habitually
\nreferred in the past tense to their own birth-names as something given in their
\nformer existence “in the flesh”.
\nAgainst that ‘The Book’ (R, pp. 309-10) insists, on unbroken process: step\u00b7
\nby-step it traces the making of a book from once-living matter (both vegetable
\nand animal) now dead, but known to God from the first and destined (“trees,
\nbeasts and men”) to be restored by Him and made “all new again”. So ‘To the
\nHoly Bible’ (R, pp. 310-11) – “O book! life’s guide’ – literally embodies the
\nanswer to those who (like the Quakers) thought the Scriptures more or less
\nredundant. Vaughan had an altogether more practical sense of the value and
\nuse of texts, his own included. And so the final ‘Envoy'(R, pp. 311-13) with its
\nopening acclamation of light and its closing image of a captivity that is “sad”
\nbut has been turned, that is to say transformed, made new, sums up the whole
\nmeaning and purpose of Silex Scintillans. As readers (recalling the ‘Dedication’
\nat the outset) we may recognise also how God turned it – by giving the poet
\nthe gift here given back. Not the least part of that gift was Vaughan’s extraordinary
\nassimilative power, whereby he was able (deliberately) to absorb and
\ntransform not just the Herbertian idiom, but also the challenging, competing
\ndiscourse of those Puritans of many kinds whose “captive” ,2!) just along the
\nroad from Brecon, under siege but undefeated he was.
\nAll this is not to suggest-that Vaughan deployed for merely polemical reasons
\nthose figures I have focussed on. They were, after all, part of his birthright as
\na child of the Church, its Prayer Book and Scriptures. He was also deeply
\nabsorbed scientifically as well as spiritually and doctrinally, by the phenomenon
\nof light. His intuition of wholeness (of the necessary conjunction of dark with
\nlight, for example) came first from nature not something beyond it. But using
\nthe language of light in poetry written and published in the late 1640’s and
\n1650’s was to engage, perforce, in the urgent, on-going dispute over its possession
\nand meaning. His poetry was, in effect, an answer to the dilemma of a
\nonce united Christian kingdom, no longer kingdom, or united or (it seemed to
\nhim) truly Christian. More particularly it was a heartfelt response to the sad
\ncondition of that darkest of dark corners, his own land, Wales. These concerns
\nand troubles were not a distraction from some loftier flight, but the necessary
\nspur to Vaughan’s imagination and intellect. Adversity, as he said, made him a
\ntrue poet with something to say for himself and his people, not just a clever
\nventriloquist. Without the need to react to disaster, loss and disintegration, to
\nput himself together again, to fight back, and to work to sustain a defeated
\nChurch in the wilderness he would not, could not have written as he did. The
\nCivil War, which left so much destruction and damage, pain and loss in its
\nwake, was also paradoxically and powerfully creative. Henry Vaughan, like
\nthat other poet in the wilderness John Milton, reveals some of the workings of
\na process whereby that transformation of defeat into a kind of victory, a
\nremaking after all, came about.<\/p>\n [29] The very word was on Erbery’s lips (he talked of being in a “captive state”) in 1652; see note<\/span>
\n[25] above.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Table of Contents Author Title # Peter W. Thomas The Language of Light: Henry Vaughan and the Puritans 9 \u2026<\/p>\n Read<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52,"parent":179,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-210","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/scintilla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/scintilla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/scintilla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/scintilla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/scintilla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/scintilla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1230,"href":"https:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/scintilla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/210\/revisions\/1230"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/scintilla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/scintilla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/scintilla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a><\/h2>\n