The Waterfall: A Poem by Henry Vaughan
An interesting piece by a “minor metaphysical”
Henry Vaughan (1621–95) belonged to the younger generation of Metaphysical poets and willingly acknowledged his debt to the older generation, especially George Herbert who died when Vaughan was twelve years old. Some of the parallels between poems by Vaughan and Herbert are so strong that the younger poet can sometimes be accused of plagiarism. That said, Vaughan did have a distinctive voice of his own.
Like John Donne, Henry Vaughan wrote mostly secular verse when young and religious verse when older. He had some sort of conversion experience in 1648 and in 1650 published “Silex Scintillans” (“The Flaming Flint”), a collection of poems on religious themes. This was expanded in the edition published in 1655 and “The Waterfall” was one of the poems added at this time.
The poem is in two parts that are distinct in their scansion and repetitive in their meaning. They give the impression of two separate poems on the same theme that the poet decided to throw together under the same title.
The first part, of twelve lines, seems to have something of George Herbert’s style about it. Two long lines (of ten syllables each) are followed by two lines of only four syllables each, these lines being heavily indented on the page. There are…
