I've been poking around lately in a paperback (Oxford Poetry Library) of Henry Vaughan's work--partly out of my slant rime interest (slant rimes seem to appear in his work passim... though of course one can never be sure about vowel pronounciation, particularly in the case of a Welshman from the 1600s.)
Anyway, this poem particularly charmed me--I like the mix of abstract and concrete, and I love the penultimate and ultimate stanzas.
Notes: "On the score" apparently means in debt. "Fits" is apparently a pun--both the sense we know, and "fits" as in cantos of a poem (remember "The Hunting of the Snark"--"an agony in eight fits"?). "Purls" is also a pun--whirling water, decorative edging for clothes, and possibly a kind of liquor brewed with bitter herbs and beer (!)...
(short lines should be indented...)
Idle Verse
Go, go, quaint follies, sugared sin,
Shadow no more my door;
I will no longer cobwebs spin,
I'm too much on the score.
For since amidst my youth and night,
My great preserver smiles,
We'll make a match, my only light,
And join against their wiles.
Blind, desp'rate fits, that study how
To dress and trim our shame,
That gild rank poison, and allow
Vice in a fairer name;
The purls of youthful blood and bowls,
LUst in the robes of love,
The idle talk of fev'rish souls,
Sick with a scarf, or glove.
Let it suffice my warmer days
Simpered and shined on you,
'Twist not my cypress with your bays,
Or roses with my yew;
Go, go, seek out some greener thing,
It snows, and freezeth here;
Let nightingales attend the spring,
Winter is all my year.
I confess am a bit unclear whether the sugared sins & quaint follies apostrophed are meant to be identified with the "Idle Verse" of the title (though that is how I take it, in view of the last two stanzas). Or what the antecedent of "their" is in stanza two (youth and night perhaps?--or does it look forward to "fits" and "purls"?). Actually, would love to hear some exegisis of this poem from some of our more learned folk. I should also mention Vaughan is heavily influenced by George Herbert...
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