Henry Vaughan

Henry Vaughan (1621–1695) was a Welsh poet who called himself the Silurist after the ancient people of his native Breconshire. With his twin brother Thomas, the alchemist and philosopher, he studied at Oxford, and he later practiced as a physician in Wales. After early secular poems, including Poems of 1646 and Olor Iscanus, a spiritual crisis, influenced by the poetry of George Herbert, led to Silex Scintillans, published in 1650 and 1655, whose visionary poems on eternity, childhood and nature, such as The Retreat and The World, place him among the finest metaphysical poets.