Vaughan

Henry Vaughan

Vaughan was fascinated by the phrases of other poets. This is not unusual in young poet; but the habit of borrowing continued with Vaughan to the end. In secular poems, the most obvious debts are to Donne, though also by the Elizabethan use of mythological names and Petrarchan attitude to the mistress. There is seldom a personal note, he is not sure of what he wants to say. Hispoem seem to fall apart, an elaborate image is followed by a lame conclusion. He is more interested in poetry than in his poem. In Silex Scintillians, Herbert’s influence is predominant, borrowing his phrases, themes, metrical effects, titles but the poem is his own; He transmutes it. Herbert’s teaching operated a conversion in Vaughan and he became a religious poet; but his religious experiencewas different and required for its expressions different imagery and different rhythms. That Vaughan borrows is unimportant, it was a custom of the time. But there are two peculiarities in his early poems. Vaughan never seems interested in his subject. He plays with an image and delays its application until the last stanza. Also he draw his images from the countryside even if his model seldom lookin that direction. The result is that his own experience has no inevistable connection with the situation to which applies it.

He has no literary model, he is interested, and he dwells on more detail that he can make use of for his parallel. They remain two separate observations arbitrarily linked together. The total impression left by Vaughan’s poem is that the metaphysical conceit was afashion he accepted rather than the outcome of his own habit of mind. He had not, like Donne, the kind of mind that is aware of logical situations recurring in diverse kind of experience. He discover later, a conception of universe as a whole, which lead him to perceive a relation between ots various parts. These are signs in his early poems of the direction in which Vaughan would look for such aconception. His poetry becomes sensistive nad individual when it describes nature. He dwells with loving particularity on scenes and on chances of light.

His secular poems come to life when they reflect his responsiveness to the world about him. He looks at nature through the eyes of other poets, but his own awareness percolate through their phrases and fancies. What was needed to make Vaughan apoet was some central experience to which to relate his awareness of nature. His poems became entities when he recognized the phenomena of nature as relevant to his interpretation of the world.

Herbert’s influence helped him to this end. Vaughan dissociates himself from those ‘Wits’, he had imitated because he would prevent a just censure by his free confession. Something happened to make himturn away with contempt from the amorous verse he had practised and he now claimed a new allegiance to holy life and verse.

Under Herbert’s influence Vaughan discovered what he really wanted to say. He was passionately concerned with the relation between God and the individual soul, and gave significance to his observations in the external world. He explore his religious belief, finding that itcentred in his conception of nature. From being only an illustration, it became the core of his poetry. Vaughan emerged as a metaphysical poet, not imitating other, now he achieve a sense of direction and became capable of correlating his experiences. His arguments are now seen in the poetry as facets of a single whole. Successful metaphysical imagery demands and repays close scrutiny. Themeaning of the image tends to expand as we contemplate it. All this and more is compressed within an image. In false metaphysical poetry the relation contemplated depends on superficial resemblance. This is the predominant difference between Vaughan’s secular and religious poetry. He contemplates the same things, but whereas before he look round for a subject they could adorn and contented himself,...