Henry Vaughan Quotes

43 Sourced Quotes

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
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
A ward, and still in bonds, one day
I stole abroad;
It was high spring, and all the way
Primrosed and hung with shade;
Yet was it frost within,
And surly winds
Blasted my infant buds, and sin
Like clouds eclipsed my mind.

Henry Vaughan
Dear Night! this world's defeat;
The stop to busy fools; care's check and curb;
The day of spirits; my soul's calm retreat
Which none disturb!
Christ's progress, and His prayer-time;
The hours to which high Heaven doth chime.

Henry Vaughan
Then bless thy secret growth, nor catch
At noise, but thrive unseen and dumb;
Keep clean, be as fruit, earn life, and watch
Till the white-wing'd reapers come!

Henry Vaughan
Wise Nicodemus saw such light
As made him know his God by night.

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
Prayer is
The world in tune,
A spirit-voice,
And vocal joys,
Whose echo is heaven's bliss.
O let me climb When I lie down!

Henry Vaughan
When first thy eyes unveil, give thy soul leave
To do the like; our bodies but forerun
The spirit's duty. True hearts spread and heave
Unto their God, as flow'rs do to the sun.
Give him thy first thoughts then; so shalt thou keep
Him company all day, and in him sleep.

Henry Vaughan
Mornings are mysteries; the first world's youth,
Man's resurrection, and the future's bud
Shroud in their births.

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

Henry Vaughan
As great a store
Have we of books as bees of herbs or more.

Henry Vaughan
Early, as well as late,
Rise with the sun, and set in the same bowers

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

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

Henry Vaughan
Prayer is The world in tune, A spirit-voyce, And vocall joyes, Whose Eccho is heaven's blisse.

Henry Vaughan
Death, and darkness get you packing, Nothing now to man is lacking, All your triumphs now are ended, And what Adam marred, is mended.

Henry Vaughan
The sun doth shake Light from his locks, and, all the way Breathing perfumes, doth spice the day.

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
I played with fire, did counsel spurn, Made life my common stake; But never thought that fire would burn, O that a soul could ache.

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

Henry Vaughan
Should poor souls fear a shade or night,
Who came sure from a sea of light?
Or since those drops are all sent back
So sure to thee, that none doth lack,
Why should frail flesh doubt any more
That what God takes, He'll not restore?

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
I cannot reach it, and my striving eye
Dazzles at it, as at eternity. Were now that chronicle alive,
Those white designs which children drive,
And the thoughts of each harmless hour,
With their content too in my pow'r,
Quickly would I make my path even,
And by mere playing go to heaven.

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

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
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
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