Henry Vaughan Quotes

43 Sourced Quotes

They are all gone into the world of light!
And I alone sit lingering here;
Their very memory is fair and bright,
And my sad thoughts doth clear.

Henry Vaughan
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, and mortifies the earth, and all, but your wild revels, and loose hall.

Henry Vaughan
There is in God — some say —
A deep, but dazzling darkness; as men here
Say it is late and dusky, because they
See not all clear.
O for that Night! where I in Him
Might live invisible and dim!

Henry Vaughan
Most blest believer he!
Who in that land of darkness and blind eyes
Thy long expected healing wings could see
When Thou didst rise!

Henry Vaughan
I will on thee as on a comet look,
A comet, the sad world's ill-boding book;
Thy light as luctual and stain'd with woes
I'll judge, where penal flames sit mixt and close.
But though some think thou shin'st but to restrain
Bold storms, and simply dost attend on rain;
Yet I know well, and so our sins require,
Thou dost but court cold rain, till rain turns fire.

Henry Vaughan
Dear, harmless age! the short, swift span
Where weeping Virtue parts with man;
Where love without lust dwells, and bends
What way we please without self-ends. An age of mysteries! which he
Must live that would God's face see
Which angels guard, and with it play,
Angels! which foul men drive away.

Henry Vaughan
Why should I not love childhood still?
Why, if I see a rock or shelf,
Shall I from thence cast down myself?
Or by complying with the world,
From the same precipice be hurled?
Those observations are but foul,
Which make me wise to lose my soul. And yet the practice worldlings call
Business, and weighty action all,
Checking the poor child for his play,
But gravely cast themselves away.

Henry Vaughan
For each inclosed spirit is a star
Enlightening his own little sphere

Henry Vaughan
Bright shadows of true rest! some shoots of bliss;
Heaven once a week;
The next world's gladness prepossest in this;
A day to seek;
Eternity in time; the steps by which
We climb above all ages: lamps that light
Man through his heap of dark days; and the rich
And full redemption of the whole week's flight.

Henry Vaughan
Some men a forward motion love,
But I by backward steps would move,
And when this dust falls to the urn,
In that state I came, return.

Henry Vaughan
Holy writing must strive (by all means) for perfection and true holiness, that a door may be opened to him in heaven.

Henry Vaughan
The skin and shell of things Though fair are not Thy wish nor prayer but got My meer despair of wings.

Henry Vaughan
Still young and fine! but what is still in view
We slight as old and soil'd, though fresh and new.

Henry Vaughan
Affliction is a mother,
Whose painful throes yield many sons,
Each fairer than the other.

Henry Vaughan
Tempests and windes and winter-nights
Vex not, that but One sees thee grow,
That One made all these lesser lights.
If those bright joys He singly sheds
On thee, were all met in one crown,
Both sun and stars would hide their heads ;
And moons, though full, would get them down.

Henry Vaughan
And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul when man doth sleep,
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.

Henry Vaughan
I saw Eternity the other night
Like a great ring of pure and endless light.
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv'n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow moved; in which the world
And all her train were hurled.

Henry Vaughan
Man is the shuttle, to whose winding quest
And passage through these looms
God ordered motion, but ordained no rest.

Henry Vaughan
Dear, beauteous death, the jewel of the just!
Shining nowhere but in the dark;
What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust,
Could man outlook that mark!

Henry Vaughan
Yet never sleep the sun up. Prayer shou'd
Dawn with the day. There are set, awful hours
'Twixt heaven and us. The manna was not good
After sun-rising; far day sullies flowres.
Rise to prevent the sun; sleep doth sin glut,
And heaven's gate opens when the world's is shut.

Henry Vaughan