"The Pearl" is also of great beauty and autobiographic interest. He knows the ways of Learning, Honour, and Pleasure, and he has chosen the better way. The British Church is commended as the Midway between "Her on the hills" (the Seven Hills) and Her that
in the valley is so shy
Of dressing, that her hair doth lie
About her ears;
While she avoids her neighbour's pride,
She wholly goes on th' other side,
And nothing wears;
better than wearing "rags of Aaron's old wardrobe" said Milton. "The Quip" hath a certain holy gaiety, as of a ballad. Herbert was not a great poet, he never storms the cloudcapt towers, and "flaming walls of the world," like Crashaw. But he has been dear to many holy and humble men of heart.
Vaughan.
Henry Vaughan and his twin brother Thomas were born in 1622, at Newton St. Bridget, on the Usk, in South Wales, hence he chose to style himself "Silurist" from the name of the ancient tribe of that region. There is some confusion between him and his brother Thomas, who certainly went (1638) to Jesus College, Oxford, while Henry's name is not on the books. Henry is said to have studied law in London. In the Civil War he may have taken up arms, at least he saw, if he did not fight in the battle of Rowton Heath (24 Sept., 1645) and he commemorates in a poem the courage of a friend, Mr. R. W., who fell on the Cavalier side. In some humorous verses about a huge cloak borrowed from another friend he speaks of wearing it during the Royalist retreat from the Dee, and about the Puritan soldiery that seized him. In a Latin poem, "Ad Posteros," he says that he merely lamented the war; in any case he won no laurels and probably shed no blood. "The Bard does not fight," says a Gaelic proverb. He studied medicine, and lived retired at Brecknock. His first verses (1641) congratulate Charles I on his return from Scotland. In 1646 appeared his "Poems," including a rather tame translation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal on "The Vanity of Human Wishes," with some pretty love lyrics to Amoret. Unlike Suckling and Carew, these volatile hearts,
I not for an hour did love,
Or for a day desire,
But with my soul had from above
This endless holy fire.
He "courted the mind," not the body.
His volume, "Olor Iscanus" (the swan of Usk) appeared in 1651, opening with a eulogy of his beautiful native river, in smooth rhymed octosyllabic verse, mixed with decasyllabic couplets. There are also epistles to friends, one deplores the antiquated dullness of Brecknock, another celebrates the matchless Orinda, Mrs. Phillips, and there are translations from Latin verse.
Vaughan lives, not by these poems, nor by "Thalia Rediviva," but by his "Silex Scintillans," the sparkling flint, sacred poems of 1650-1655. He professedly follows George Herbert, being "the least of his many pious converts". Direct imitations of Herbert are not infrequent in these hymns, which, like Herbert, sigh for the far-away days when angels sat at Abraham's board,
O, how familiar then was heaven!