The will of God alone, not what we may have effected,
deserves our care. In the perishing of our deeds they fall at his feet:
in our willing their loss we crown his head.
CHAPTER XVIII.
A MOUNT OF VISION--HENRY VAUGHAN.
We have now arrived at the borders of a long, dreary tract, which,
happily for my readers, I can shorten for them in this my retrospect.
From the heights of Henry Vaughan's verse, I look across a stony region,
with a few feeble oases scattered over it, and a hazy green in the
distance. It does not soften the dreariness that its stones are all laid
in order, that the spaces which should be meadows are skilfully paved.
Henry Vaughan belongs to the mystical school, but his poetry rules his
theories. You find no more of the mystic than the poet can easily govern;
in fact, scarcely more than is necessary to the highest poetry. He
develops his mysticism upwards, with relation to his higher nature alone:
it blossoms into poetry. His twin-brother Thomas developed his mysticism
downwards in the direction of the material sciences--a true effort still,
but one in which the danger of ceasing to be true increases with
increasing ratio the further it is carried.
They were born in South Wales in the year 1621. Thomas was a clergyman;
Henry a doctor of medicine. Both were Royalists, and both suffered in the
cause--Thomas by expulsion from his living, Henry by imprisonment.
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