A Cavalier Poet

The 17th century Cavalier poets were somewhat secular poets who sided with Charles I while England was in civil war, and who were opponents of the Metaphysical poets. These guys- and there are about twelve of them- are pretty kick ass writers, and although the intellectual depth of Metaphysical poets like Donne is much more apparent, I still respect these poets as poets. I can’t wait to share more about these poets with all my Blogspot buddies …

Now, I’ve already read quite a bit by the figurehead of this group, Ben Jonson, and was hooked by this poem below, check out the talent …



His Excuse for Loving

Let it not your wonder move,
Less your laughter, that I love.
Though I now write fifty years,
I have had, and have, my peers.
Poets, though divine, are men;
Some have loved as old again.
And it is not always face,
Clothes, or fortune gives the grace,
Or the feature, or the youth;
But the language and the truth,
With the ardor and the passion,
Gives the lover weight and fashion.
If you then would hear the story,
First, prepare you to be sorry
That you never knew till now
Either whom to love or how;
But be glad as soon with me
When you hear that this is she
Of whose beauty it was sung,
She shall make the old man young,
Keep the middle age at stay,
And let nothing hide decay,
Till she be the reason why
All the world for love may die.

Henry Vaughan*

Henry Vaughan (1621-1695)

Henry Vaughan was born in 1622 in Breconshire, Wales to Thomas Vaughan and Denise Morgan. Entering Oxford University in 1638 where he studied with his twin brother Thomas followed his Welsh childhood. In 1640 he left Oxford to study law in London for two years. It was also in London that he started his poetic apprenticeship at the Inns of Court. In 1642 he returned back to Breconshire at the onset of a Civil War. It is here that he served as secretary to the Circuit Chief Justice of the Great Sessions until 1645. At that time he joined the company of soldiers who fought for King Charles's cause with Sir Herbert Price at Chester. By 1646 it is assumed he married Catherine Wise with whom he was to have a son and three daughters.

Before 1650 Vaughan's poetry was mostly secular but in the period of 1650 and the years spanning there after his poetry turned toward spiritual issues and he became known as a mystical writer. The mysticism and Neoplatonism of Vaughn's best known collection of poems, Silex Scintillans or The Fiery Flint link him to the metaphysical tradition of Donne, Herbert, and Crashaw, yet his verse continued to reflect his fondness for the wit and spareness of Jonson. The poems contained within this work express his anger and disappointment at the outcome of the Civil War. For example, within the poem In Prayer in Time of Persecution Vaughan rails against the Puritans for confiscating the woods of his family’s estate. Sometime after 1650 in additon to writing and translating works on the subject he practiced as a physician.

The following year (1651) Olor Iscanus or The Swan of Usk was published which was a collection of secular poetry with four prose translations. This piece was so named because of the River Usk, which flows near his hometown. Even though it was a secular work it did contain "rhapsodic passages about natural beauty". In 1655 Silex Scintillans was reprinted with a second additional part. In this section he talks of an illness he had suffered which appears to have been spiritual and may have even been the cause of his conversion experience. In this preface he also contributes his spiritual awakening to the poems of George Herbert. It is definitely apparent that Vaughan's inspired religious poetry is very reminiscent of Herbert's The Temple.

He died on April 23, 1695, and was buried in Llansantffraed churchyard.

*Biography from Poet Seers

John Donne*

John Donne (1572 – 1631)

John Donne was born in 1572 in London, England. He is known as the founder of the Metaphysical Poets, a term created by Samuel Johnson, an eighteenth-century English essayist, poet, and philosopher. The loosely associated group also includes George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell, and John Cleveland. The Metaphysical Poets are known for their ability to startle the reader and coax new perspective through paradoxical images, subtle argument, inventive syntax, and imagery from art, philosophy, and religion using an extended metaphor known as a conceit. Donne reached beyond the rational and hierarchical structures of the seventeenth century with his exacting and ingenious conceits, advancing the exploratory spirit of his time.

Donne entered the world during a period of theological and political unrest for both England and France; a Protestant massacre occurred on Saint Bartholomew's day in France; while in England, the Catholics were the persecuted minority. Born into a Roman Catholic family, Donne's personal relationship with religion was tumultuous and passionate, and at the center of much of his poetry. He studied at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities in his early teen years. He did not take a degree at either school, because to do so would have meant subscribing to the Thirty-nine Articles, the doctrine that defined Anglicanism. At age twenty he studied law at Lincoln's Inn. Two years later he succumbed to religious pressure and joined the Anglican Church after his younger brother, convicted for his Catholic loyalties, died in prison. Donne wrote most of his love lyrics, erotic verse, and some sacred poems in the 1590's, creating two major volumes of work: Satires, and Songs and Sonnets.

In 1598, after returning from a two-year naval expedition against Spain, Donne was appointed private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton. While sitting in Queen Elizabeth's last Parliament in 1601, Donne secretly married Anne More, the sixteen-year-old niece of Lady Egerton. Donne's father-in-law disapproved of the marriage. As punishment, he did not provide a dowry for the couple and had Donne briefly imprisoned. This left the couple isolated and dependent on friends, relatives, and patrons. Donne suffered social and financial instability in the years following his marriage, exacerbated by the birth of many children. He continued to write and published the Divine Poems in 1607. In Pseudo-Martyr, published in 1610, Donne displayed his extensive knowledge of the laws of the Church and state, arguing that Roman Catholics could support James I without compromising their faith. In 1615, James I pressured him to enter the Anglican Ministry by declaring that Donne could not be employed outside of the Church. He was appointed Royal Chaplain later that year. His wife, aged thirty-three, died in 1617, shortly after giving birth to their twelfth child, a stillborn. The Holy Sonnets are also attributed to this phase of his life.

In 1621 he became dean of Saint Paul's Cathedral. In his later years, Donne's writing reflected his fear of his inevitable death. He wrote his private prayers, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, during a period of severe illness and published them in 1624. His learned, charismatic, and inventive preaching made him a highly influential presence in London. Best known for his vivacious, compelling style and thorough examination of mortal paradox, John Donne died in London in 1631.

*Biography from Poets.org