biography
pronunciation:
[vawn]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1622–95)
|
| biography:
| Religious poet, born in Newton-by-Usk, S Wales, UK. He studied at Oxford and London, became a doctor, and settled near Brecon. His best-known works are the pious meditations Silex scintillans (1650, enlarged 1655) and the prose devotions The Mount of Olives (1652). He also published elegies, translations, and other pieces, all within the tradition of metaphysical poetry. Of these, ‘The Retreat’ is considered his masterpiece, with its images of light and colour and its use of natural phenomena as emblems of spiritual states. He styled himself ‘Henry Vaughan, Silurist’, a reference to his homeland in the Welsh borderland, which was once occupied by the ancient British Silures. |
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