“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.”~W.H. Auden
Far beyond the stars,
Where stands a winged sentry
All skilful in the wars:
There, above noise and danger,
Sweet Peace sits crown’d with smiles,
And One born in a manger
Commands the beauteous files.
He is thy gracious Friend,
And—O my soul, awake!—
Did in pure love descend
To die here for thy sake.
If thou canst get but thither,
There grows the flower of Peace,
The Rose that cannot wither,
Thy fortress, and thy ease.
Leave then thy foolish ranges;
For none can thee secure
But One who never changes—
Thy God, thy life, thy cure.
More poems by Henry Vaughan. I particularly like the “rIng of endless light” poem entitled The World. Wouldn’t some of these, including the one above, make lovely hymns? Musical talent, anyone?
Vaughan, by the way, credited poet George Herbert, “the blessed man whose holy life and verse gained many pious converts, of whom I am the least” with inspiring him as a Christian and as a poet. Thus begins another sort of ring of poetical light, from Donne to Herbert to Vaughan and so on.