SOURCE: "The Secular and Religious Poetry of Henry Vaughan," in Modem Language Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 3, December, 1948, pp. 394-411.

Marila was a prominent American scholar of English Renaissance poetry and the poetry of John Milton. He edited The Secular Poems of Henry Vaughan (1958). In the following excerpt, Marilla examines poems from the two editions of Silex Scintillans as well as Poems and Olor Iscanus. His purpose is threefold: to demonstrate that Vaughan 's secular verse is characterized by craftmanship that is distinctly similar to and nearly as skillful as that of the religious poetry, that (contrary to the claims of other critics) the secular poems are indicative of Vaughan's immanent maturity as a poet, and that Vaughan's entire poetic canon deserves to be reevaluated.

It is obvious that Henry Vaughan's rescue from long oblivion by nineteenth-century clerical editors was inspired more by evangelical interest than by artistic perception. Devout...