When for the thorns with which I long too long, With many a piercing wound, My Saviour's head have crowned, I seek with garlands to redress that wrong, Through every garden, every mead I gather flowers--my fruits are only flowers-- Dismantling all the fragrant towers That once adorned my shepherdess's head; And now, when I have summed up all my store, Thinking--so I myself deceive-- So rich a chaplet thence to weave As never yet the King of glory wore; Alas! I find the serpent old, That, twining in his speckled breast, About the flowers disguised does fold, With wreaths of fame and interest. Ah, foolish man that wouldst debase with them And mortal glory, heaven's diadem! But thou who only couldst the serpent tame, Either his slippery knots at once untie, And disentangle all his winding snare, Or shatter too with him my curious frame,[142] And let these wither, that so he may die, Though set with skill, and chosen out with care; That they, while thou on both their spoils dost tread, May crown thy feet that could not crown thy head. A true sacrifice of worship, if not a garland of praise! The disciple would have his works tried by the fire, not only that the gold and the precious stones may emerge relucent, but that the wood and hay and stubble may perish. The will of God alone, not what we may have effected, deserves our care. In the perishing of our deeds they fall at his feet: in our willing their loss we crown his head. CHAPTER XVIII. A MOUNT OF VISION--HENRY VAUGHAN. We have now arrived at the borders of a long, dreary tract, which, happily for my readers, I can shorten for them in this my retrospect. From the heights of Henry Vaughan's verse, I look across a stony region, with a few feeble oases scattered over it, and a hazy green in the distance. It does not soften the dreariness that its stones are all laid in order, that the spaces which should be meadows are skilfully paved. Henry Vaughan belongs to the mystical school, but his poetry rules his theories. You find no more of the mystic than the poet can easily govern; in fact, scarcely more than is necessary to the highest poetry. He develops his mysticism upwards, with relation to his higher nature alone: it blossoms into poetry. His twin-brother Thomas developed his mysticism downwards in the direction of the material sciences--a true effort still, but one in which the danger of ceasing to be true increases with increasing ratio the further it is carried. They were born in South Wales in the year 1621. Thomas was a clergyman; Henry a doctor of medicine. Both were Royalists, and both suffered in the cause--Thomas by expulsion from his living, Henry by imprisonment. Thomas died soon after the Restoration; Henry outlived the Revolution.