Henry Vaughan Quotes
Dear, harmless age! the short, swift span Where weeping Virtue parts with man; Where love without lust dwells, and bends What way we please without self-ends. An age of mysteries! which he Must live that would God's face see Which angels guard, and with it play, Angels! which foul men drive away.
Vaughan, Henry. "Childe-hood." The Works of Henry Vaughan, edited by L. C. Martin, vol. 2, Clarendon Press, 1914, p. 520.
Henry Vaughan was a Welsh metaphysical poet, author, translator and physician, writing in English. He is chiefly known for religious poetry published in Silex Scintillans in 1650, with a second part in 1655. In 1646 his poems, with the Tenth Satyre of Juvenal Englished, were published, followed by a second volume in 1647. Meanwhile, he had been persuaded by reading the religious poet George Herbert to give up "idle verse". The prose Mount of Olives or Solitary Devotions (1652) shows the depth of his religious convictions and authenticity of his genius. Two more volumes of secular verse followed, ostensibly without his sanction, but it is his religious verse that has been acclaimed. He also translated short moral and religious works and two medical works in prose. In the 1650s he began a lifelong practice of medicine.
