Henry Vaughan Poems

Love, the world's life! What a sad death
Thy absence is to lose our breath
At once and die, is but to live
Enlarged, without the scant reprieve
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1 Whatever 'tis, whose beauty here below
2 Attracts thee thus and makes thee stream and flow,
3 And wind and curl, and wink and smile,
4 Shifting thy gate and guile;
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1 Happy those early days, when I
2 Shin'd in my angel-infancy!
3 Before I understood this place
4 Appointed for my second race,
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Weighing the steadfastness and state
Of some mean things which here below reside,
Where birds like watchful clocks the noiseless date
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Eternal God! Maker of all
That have lived here since the man's fall:
The Rock of Ages! in whose shade
They live unseen, when here they fade;
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1 They are all gone into the world of light!
2 And I alone sit ling'ring here;
3 Their very memory is fair and bright,
4 And my sad thoughts doth clear.
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False life, a foil and no more, when
Wilt thou be gone?
Thou foul deception of all men
That would not have the true come on.
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Since in a land not barren still
(Because Thou dost Thy grace distill)
My lot is fallen, blest be Thy will!
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So stick up ivy and the bays,
And then restore the heathen ways.
Green will remind you of the spring,
Though this great day denies the thing.
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1

Bright shadows of true Rest! some shoots of bliss,
Heaven once a week;
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