I do not think that description of the dawn has ever been surpassed.  The verse “All expect some sudden matter,” is wondrously fine.  The water “dead and in a grave,” because stagnant, is a true fancy; and the “acquainted elsewhere” of the running stream, is a masterly phrase.  I need not point out the symbolism of the poem.

I do not know a writer, Wordsworth not excepted, who reveals more delight in the visions of Nature than Henry Vaughan.  He is a true forerunner of Wordsworth, inasmuch as the latter sets forth with only greater profundity and more art than he, the relations between Nature and Human Nature; while, on the other hand, he is the forerunner as well of some one that must yet do what Wordsworth has left almost unattempted, namely—­set forth the sympathy of Nature with the aspirations of the spirit that is born of God, born again, I mean, in the recognition of the child’s relation to the Father.  Both Herbert and Vaughan have thus read Nature, the latter turning many leaves which few besides have turned.  In this he has struck upon a deeper and richer lode than even Wordsworth, although he has not wrought it with half his skill.  In any history of the development of the love of the present age for Nature, Vaughan, although I fear his influence would be found to have been small as yet, must be represented as the Phosphor of coming dawn.  Beside him, Thomson is cold, artistic, and gray:  although larger in scope, he is not to be compared with him in sympathetic sight.  It is this insight that makes Vaughan a mystic.  He can see one thing everywhere, and all things the same—­yet each with a thousand sides that radiate crossing lights, even as the airy particles around us.  For him everything is the expression of, and points back to, some fact in the Divine Thought.  Along the line of every ray he looks towards its radiating centre—­the heart of the Maker.

I could give many instances of Vaughan’s power in reading the heart of Nature, but I may not dwell upon this phase.  Almost all the poems I give and have given will afford such.

  I walked the other day, to spend my hour,
      Into a field,
  Where I sometimes had seen the soil to yield
      A gallant flower;
  But winter now had ruffled all the bower
      And curious store
    I knew there heretofore.

  Yet I whose search loved not to peep and peer
      I’ th’ face of things,
  Thought with myself, there might be other springs
      Besides this here,
  Which, like cold friends, sees us but once a year;
      And so the flower
    Might have some other bower.

  Then taking up what I could nearest spy,
      I digged about
  That place where I had seen him to grow out;
      And by and by
  I saw the warm recluse alone to lie,
      Where fresh and green
    He lived of us unseen.

  Many a question intricate and rare
      Did I there strow;
  But all I could extort was, that he now
      Did there repair
  Such losses as befell him in this air,
      And would ere long
    Come forth most fair and young.