Henry Vaughan
1621-1695 17th century
Light that gives itself at night, and grief that turns into watching.
Who was Henry Vaughan?
A Welsh physician, he spent his whole life in the Usk valley, tending the farms around him. The civil war, the death of his younger brother and a long illness turned his poetry around: he dropped the verse of his youth for Silex Scintillans, the flint that gives a spark when it is struck. He sought no audience and had himself buried in his village churchyard.
In their own words
I saw Eternity the other night, like a great ring of pure and endless light.
There is in God, some say, a deep but dazzling darkness.
They are all gone into the world of light, and I alone sit ling'ring here.