Henry Vaughan

“ All cares; for they things competent and fit
For us foresee; besides, man is more dear
To them than to himself; we blindly here,
Led by the world and lust, in vain assay
To get us portions, wives and sons; but they
Already know all that we can intend,
And of our children's children see the end.
Yet that thou may'st have something to commend
[48] With thanks unto the gods for what they send;
Pray for a wise and knowing soul; a sad,
Discreet, true valour, that will scorn to add
A needless horror to thy death; that knows
'Tis but a debt which man to nature owes ”

“ Happy those early days, when I
Shined in my Angel-infancy!
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy aught
But a white, celestial thought;
When yet I had not walk'd above
A mile or two from my first Love,
And looking back, at that short space
Could see a glimpse of His bright face;
When on some gilded cloud or flower
My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense
A several sin to every sense, ”

“ Breathing perfumes, doth spice the day.
Awake! awake! hark how th' wood rings,
Winds whisper, and the busy springs
A concert make!
Awake! awake!
Man is their high-priest, and should rise
To offer up the sacrifice. ”

“ Wit's last edition is now i' th' press.
For thou hast drain'd invention, and he
That writes hereafter, doth but pillage thee.
But thou hast plots; and will not the Kirk strain
At the designs of such a tragic brain?
Will they themselves think safe, when they shall see
Thy most abominable policy?
Will not the Ears assemble, and think't fit
Their Synod fast and pray against thy wit?
But they'll not tire in such an idle quest;
Thou dost but kill, and circumvent in jest;
And when thy anger'd Muse swells to a blow
'Tis but for Field's, or Swansted's overthrow. ”

“ From whence th' enlighten'd spirit sees
That shady City of Palm-trees!
But ah! my soul with too much stay
Is drunk, and stuggers in the way:---
Some men a forward motion love,
But I by backward steps would move ”

“ Man stole from heaven, to heav'n doth still aspire,
So this vast crying sum draws in a less;
And hence this bag more Northward laid I guess,
For 'tis of pole-star force, and in this sphere
Though th' least of many, rules the master-bear.
Prerogative of debts! how he doth dress
His messages in chink! not an express
Without a fee for reading; and 'tis fit,
For gold's the best restorative of wit.
Oh how he gilds them o'er! with what delight
I read those lines, which angels do indite!
But wilt have money, Og? must I dispurse
Will nothing serve thee but a poet's curse? ”

“ There grows the flower of Peace,
The Rose that cannot wither,
Thy fortress and thy ease.
Leave then thy foolish ranges,
For none can thee secure
But One, who never changes,
Thy God, thy life, thy cure. ”

“ Light from his locks, and, all the way
Breathing perfumes, doth spice the day. ”

“ Some men a forward motion love,
But I by backward steps would move; ”

“ TO MY LEARNED FRIEND, MR. T. POWELL,
UPON HIS TRANSLATION OF
MALVEZZI'S CHRISTIAN POLITICIAN.
We thank you, worthy Sir, that now we see
Malvezzi languag'd like our infancy,
And can without suspicion entertain
This foreign statesman to our breast or brain;
You have enlarg'd his praise, and from your store
By this edition made his worth the more.
Thus by your learnèd hand—amidst the coil—
Outlandish plants thrive in our thankless soil,
And wise men after death, by a strange fate,
Lie leiger here, and beg to serve our State. ”

“ Poet by voice and suffrage of the shire;
That were enough to make my Muse advance
Amongst the crutches; nay, it might enhance
Our charity, and we should think it fit
The State should build an hospital for wit.
But here needs no relief: thy richer verse
Creates all poets, that can but rehearse,
And they, like tenants better'd by their land,
Should pay thee rent for what they understand. ”

“ Diana in her silver beams doth rove;
Her crown of stars the pitchy air invades,
And with a faint light gilds the silent shades,
Whilst her sad thoughts, fix'd on her sleepy lover,
[121] To Latmos hill and his retirements move her.
A thousand more through the wide, darksome wood
Feast on their cares, the maudlin lover's food;
For grief and absence do but edge desire,
And death is fuel to a lover's fire. ”

“ That title only fits a saint,
Whose free thoughts, far above restraint
And weighty cares, can gladly part
With house and lands, and leave the smart,
Litigious troubles and loud strife
Of this world for a better life.
He fears no cold nor heat to blast
His corn, for his accounts are cast;
He sues no man, nor stands in awe
Of the devouring courts of law ”

“ For each birth of thy Muse to after-times
Shall expiate for all this Age's crimes.
First shines thy Amoret, twice crown'd by thee,
Once by thy love, next by thy poetry;
Where thou the best of unions dost dispense,
Truth cloth'd in wit, and Love in innocence;
So that the muddy lover may learn here,
No fountains can be sweet that are not clear.
There Juvenal, by thee reviv'd, declares
How flat man's joys are, and how mean his cares ”

“ I have already pointed out that Miss Vaughan is quite possibly a myth. But, if she exists, I do not see any reason to suppose that she personally invented the "legend of Philalethes." It lies between Leo Taxil and his friends in 1895, and the alleged founders of Palladism in or about 1870, that is Albert Pike and Miss Vaughan's father and uncle. And, so far as it goes, the ignorance shown in the legend of all books published in the last twenty years is evidence for the earlier date, and therefore, to some extent, for the actual existence of Luciferianism. ”

“ And cares kept up keep cares in pay.
That wretch whom Fortune finds to fear,
And melting still into a tear,
She strikes more boldly, but a face
Silent and dry doth her amaze.
Then leave thy tears, and tedious tale
Of what thou dost misfortunes call.
What thou by weeping think'st to ease,
Doth by that passion but increase;
Hard things to soft will never yield,
'Tis the dry eye that wins the field;
A noble patience quells the spite
Of Fortune, and disarms her quite. ”

“ But kick this dross: Parnassus' flow'ry brow
I'll give thee with my Tempe, and to boot
That horse which struck a fountain with his foot.
A bed of roses I'll provide for thee,
And crystal springs shall drop thee melody.
The breathing shades we'll haunt, where ev'ry leaf
Shall whisper us asleep, though thou art deaf.
Those waggish nymphs, too, which none ever yet
Durst make love to, we'll teach the loving fit ”

“ The learnèd ghosts admire, and throng
To catch the subject of his song.
Then Randolph in those holy meads,
His Lovers and Amyntas reads,
Whilst his Nightingale, close by,
Sings his and her own elegy.
From thence dismiss'd, by subtle roads,
Through airy paths and sad abodes,
They'll come into the drowsy fields
Of Lethe, which such virtue yields,
That, if what poets sing be true,
The streams all sorrow can subdue.
Here, on a silent, shady green,
The souls of lovers oft are seen,
Who, in their life's unhappy space,
Were murder'd by some perjur'd face. ”

“ Albert Pike, a man of considerable learning, could easily have invented it. Masonic symbolism lends itself readily enough to a wide range of interpretations. I do not say that seventeenth-century occultism has left no traces upon Freemasonry which modern ritual-mongers may have elaborated; but it is a far cry from this to the belief that Thomas Vaughan and Luther were Manichaean worshippers of Lucifer and Protestantism an organized warfare on Adonai. ”

“ Miss Vaughan. Was Thomas Vaughan a Rosicrucian? And was he, admittedly the author of a series of tracts under the name of Eugenius Philalethes, also the author of those which bear the name of Eirenaeus Philalethes? The first question is, I am afraid, insoluble, until it has been decided whether the Fraternity of R. C. ever had an actual existence. Anthony à Wood states that Thomas Vaughan was a zealous Rosicrucian, but probably Anthony à Wood took the term in the general sense of mystic and alchemist. ”

“ Hast lodg'd about thee, travelling in the shine
Of a pale moon, if but a reed doth shake,
Mov'd by the wind, the shadow makes thee quake.
Wealth hath its cares, and want has this relief,
It neither fears the soldier nor the thief ”

“ Of enlarg'd spirits, kind Heav'n's white decoys!
Who lives with you, lives like those knowing flow'rs,
Which in commerce with light spend all their hours:
Which shut to clouds, and shadows nicely shun,
But with glad haste unveil to kiss the sun.
Beneath you, all is dark, and a dead night,
Which whoso lives in, wants both health and sight.
By sucking you, the wise—like bees—do grow
Healing and rich, though this they do most slow,
Because most choicely ”

“ In 1636, at the age of 24, Thomas Vaughan went to London, and became the disciple of Robert Fludd, who was a Rosicrucian (p. 148) . The real nature of the Rosicrucians has hitherto been a mystery. They were in reality Luciferians, and carried on in secret during the seventeenth century that warfare against Adonai, the god of the Catholics, out of which had already sprung Wiclif, Luther, and the Reformation, and out of which was some day to spring, more deadly and more dangerous still, Freemasonry. The Fraternity of Rosie-Cross was founded by Faustus Socinus in 1597. ”

“ The bloomy maid decking with flow'rs her head,
The gladsome, easy youth by light love led;
And whatsoe'er here with admiring eyes
Thou seem'st to see, 'tis but a frail disguise
Worn by eternal things, a passive dress
Put on by beings that are passiveless. ”

“ Paulinus to repentance doth invite;
Martin's pure, harmless life, took heaven by force,
Paulinus took it by tears and remorse;
Martin leads through victorious palms and flow'rs,
Paulinus leads you through the pools and show'rs;
You that are sinners, on Paulinus look,
You that are saints, great Martin is your book;
The first example bright and holy is,
The last, though sad and weeping, leads to bliss
[313] 10. [PAULINUS. VERSUS APUD EPIST. XXXII. 5.]
Here the great well-spring of wash'd souls with beams
Of living light quickens the lively streams ”

“ Lucy Greenleafe and her sister Catharine are quite obscure. One of them may have been the niece who was living with Thomas Vaughan when news came from the country in 1658 of his father's death (MS. Sloane, 1741, f. 89 (b) ) . Of the second family, Henry became Rector of Penderin in 1684, and vacated the living, probably through death, in 1713. A tablet to his memory hung during [xxii] the present century in the church at Penderin, but when the church was restored the tablets were taken down and buried under the tiles of the chancel. ”

“ Many leading Masons, e.g., M. Papus in his Le Diable et l'Occultisme, deny that Luciferian Freemasonry exists at all, and it is freely stated (cf. Light for 27 June and 4 July, 1896, pp. 305, 322) that Miss Diana Vaughan is a myth, and that her Mémoires with the rest of the revelations are the ingenious concoction of a band of irresponsible journalists of whom Leo Taxil is the chief. No one appears to have seen Miss Vaughan, and she is alleged to be hiding in some convent from the vengeance of the Luciferians. ”

“ Both heav'n and earth would go to rack,
And from their great Preserver part;
As blood let out forsakes the heart
And perisheth, but what returns
With fresh and brighter spirits burns.
This is the cause why ev'ry living
Creature affects an endless being. ”

“ I hold it no man's prerogative to fire his own house. Thou seest how saucy I am grown, and it thou dost expect I should commend what is published, I must tell thee, I cry no Seville oranges. I will not say, Here is fine or cheap: that were an [56] injury to the verse itself, and to the effects it can produce. Read on, and thou wilt find thy spirit engaged: not by the deserts of what we call tolerable, but by the commands of a pen that is above it.
[57]
UPON THE MOST INGENIOUS PAIR OF TWINS, EUGENIUS PHILALETHES, AND THE AUTHOR OF THESE POEMS.
What planet rul'd your birth? ”

“ Man sees, his rash audacious eye
Dares censure it, and in mere spite
At distance will condemn the light.
The wholesome mornings, whose beams clear
Those hills our fathers walk'd on here,
We fancy not ”

“ Miss Vaughan somewhat naïvely gives us a lead. After describing Thomas Vaughan's sojourn with Venus-Astarte among the Lenni-Lennaps, she adds: "This legend is not accepted by all the Elect Mages; there are those who regard it as fabricated by my grandfather James of Boston, who was, they believe, of Delaware origin, or, at any rate, a half-breed; and they even assert that, in the desire to Anglicize himself, he invented an entirely false genealogy, by way of justifying his change of the Lennap name Waghan into Vaughan. ”