Skip to main content

Seeing eternity

The World by Henry Vaughan


I saw Eternity the other night
Like a great Ring of pure and endless light,
          All calm as it was bright ;
And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years,
          Driven by the spheres,
Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world
          And all her train were hurled.
The doting Lover in his quaintest strain
          Did there complain ;
Near him, his lute, his fancy, and his flights,
          Wit’s sour delights ;
With gloves and knots, the silly snares of pleasure ;
          Yet his dear treasure
All scattered lay, while he his eyes did pour
          Upon a flower.


                          2.
The darksome Statesman hung with weights and woe,
Like a thick midnight fog, moved there so slow
          He did nor stay nor go ;
Comdemning thoughts, like sad eclipses, scowl
          Upon his soul,
And clouds of crying witnesses without
          Pursued him with one shout.
Yet digged the mole, and, lest his ways be found,
          Worked under ground,
Where he did clutch his prey ; but One did see
          That policy.
Churches and altars fed him, perjuries
          Were gnats and flies ;
It rained about him blood and tears, but he
          Drank them as free.


                          3.
The fearful Miser on a heap of rust
Sat pining all his life there, did scarce trust
          His own hands with the dust ;
Yet would not place one piece above, but lives
          In fear of thieves.
Thousands there were as frantic as himself,
          And hugged each one his pelf.
The downright Epicure placed heaven in sense
          And scorned pretence ;
While others, slipped into a wide excess,
          Said little less ;
The weaker sort, slight, trivial wares enslave,
          Who think them brave ;
And poor despisèd Truth sat counting by
          Their victory.


                         4.
Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing,
And sing and weep, soared up into the Ring ;
          But most would use no wing.
‘O fools’, said I, ‘thus to prefer dark night
          Before true light,
To live in grots, and caves, and hate the day
          Because it shows the way,
The way which from this dead and dark abode
          Leads up to God,
A way where you might tread the sun, and be
          More bright than he.’
But as I did their madness so discuss,
          One whispered thus,
This Ring the Bridegroom did for none provide
          But for his Bride.
 
By pattern of association, recalling yesterday buying my second record (of Gregorian chant) with money given to me for my eighteenth birthday, I remembered that I had bought the 'Collected Poems' of Henry Vaughan. Looking at the very volume last night, I re-read his most famous poem - a Christian and Platonic meditation on the nature of the world both mystical and moral.
Vaughan is a fascinating example of a man en-visoned, heightened into poetry, who slowly loses his seeing; and, ironically, given the substance of this poem, finds himself lost in 'grots, and caves' immersed in family feuding and taking his neighbours to law! 
There is a beautiful, short book, by the literary scholar and novelist, Stevie Davis, on Henry Vaughan that illuminates the poetry on their own metaphysical terms (terms she does not necessarily share) and traces with intelligence and compassion Vaughan's closing of vision into all too human quarrelling.
It is an exemplary volume that carries you back to the poems with renewed engagement, illumined understanding and greater questioning.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Buddha meets Christ in embrace

Reading Lama Anagarika Govinda is proving nostalgic on a number of fronts. I recall my first reading of it in my first year at university, bought at Watkins, the famous 'esoteric' bookshop in Cecil Court in London. I sat in my hall of residence room transfixed by a world made familiar; and, it was deepening of a commitment to contemplation (which has been observed fitfully)! I remember returning, at the time, to my school to give a talk to the combined fifth form on Buddhism and using Govinda as the backbone of my delivery (both this book, and his equally wonderful, the Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism). I was voted (I immodestly remember) their best invited speaker of the year. I had even bought a recording of Tibetan music as opener and closer! He reminded me of how important Buddhism was (and is) to my own thinking and comprehension of my experience. The Buddha's First Sermon in the Deer Park was the first religious text I read (of my own volition) at the tender age...
13 comments
Read more

Luminous Spaces - the poetry of Olav H. Hauge

Don't give me the whole truth, don't give me the sea for my thirst, don't give me the sky when I ask for light, but give me a glint, a dewy wisp, a mote as the birds bear water-drops from their bathing and the wind a grain of salt. It began with a poem, this poem, in Mark Oakley's 'The Splash of Words: Believing in Poetry' - a wonderful series of meditations on particular poems, one each chapter. The poet is the Norwegian, Olav H. Hague (1908-1994). I immediately ordered, 'Luminous Spaces: Selected Poems & Journals' and was enjoying dipping until, at the weekend, recovering from a stomach bug, I decided to read them through and fell wholeheartedly for a new friend. Hague was born on a farm. His formal education was brought short by a combination of restricted means, an inability to conquer mathematics: and, a voracious diet of reading ranging beyond the confines of any confining curriculum. He went to a horticultural college instead an...
1 comment
Read more

Richard Hauser and the evils of Marx

Richard was a distinguished Austrian sociologist who had contributed to the Wolfenden report that led to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England, Wales and Scotland in the late 1960's. I was remembering him on the plane today because I saw a reference to his wife, Hephzibah Menuhin, pianist sister of the violinist Yehudi and human rights activist. I met him after responding to an advertisement in the New Society. He lived in a house in Pimlico, a widower, with a clutch of young people, running an ill-defined (for me) social research/action institute, that I visited several times and to which Richard wanted to recruit me. I was never clear as to what my responsibilities might be and resisted co-option. He was, however, extraordinarily charismatic and as a Jew had fled Austria in 1938 not without receiving permanent damage to his hearing, courtesy of Gestapo interrogation. I vividly remember one story he told me that gives you an idea of his character. He was invit...
17 comments
Read more