There is a party who prefer Herbert to Vaughan, another that prefer Vaughan to Herbert. The Silurist perhaps strikes the higher and the deeper note, when he does strike it, for all the Cavalier poets, sacred or secular, blossomed but rarely into perfect and memorable song: they would excel in an opening verse, in a phrase, but their full inspiration was occasional. A line like the second in "Vanity of Spirit" is rare:—
Quite spent with thoughts, I left my cell and lay
Where a shrill spring tuned to the early day.
"The Retreat":—
Happy those early days, when I
Shone in my angel infancy
is perfect, and has a forenote of Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality".
Like Wordsworth, Vaughan finds the divine near him everywhere:—
There's not a wind can stir,
Or beam pass by,
But straight I think, though far
Thy hand is nigh.
"Silence and Stealth of Days" is excellent, but never quite recaptures the charm of the opening phrase. "The Burial of an Infant" has the purity of a snowdrop: and "They are all gone into the World of Light" haunts the memory; while "The Timber" is a set of variants on a brief melancholy note of Homer. There are lovely lines, not unlike Herrick's, on "St. Mary Magdalen," and her locks,
Which with skill'd negligence are shed
About thy curious, wild, young head.
Vaughan lived to see another Revolution, and died in 1695.