The Star

Whatever ’tis, whose beauty here below

Attracts thee thus and makes thee stream and flow,

And wind and curl, and wink and smile,

Shifting thy gate and guile;

 

Though thy close commerce nought at all imbars

My present search, for eagles eye not stars,

And still the lesser by the best

And highest good is blest;

 

Yet, seeing all things that subsist and be,

Have their commissions from divinity,

And teach us duty, I will see

What man may learn from thee.

 

First, I am sure, the subject so respected

Is well dispos’d, for bodies once infected,

Deprav’d, or dead, can have with thee

No hold, nor sympathy.

 

Next, there’s in it a restless, pure desire

And longing for thy bright and vital fire,

Desire that never will be quench’d,

Nor can be writh’d, nor wrench’d.

 

These are the magnets which so strongly move

And work all night upon thy light and love,

As beauteous shapes, we know not why,

Command and guide the eye.

 

For where desire, celestial, pure desire

Hath taken root, and grows, and doth not tire,

There God a commerce states, and sheds

His secret on their heads.

 

This is the heart he craves, and who so will

But give it him, and grudge not, he shall feel

That God is true, as herbs unseen

Put on their youth and green.

 

Henry Vaughan

(In the public domain)

 

‘Commerce’ between the universe and the earth is an idea that is most crudely and in most easily comprehendible form in astrology: that man’s life is affected (guided, even!) by the influence of the heavenly bodies. Although astrology is widely derided these days, it is entirely consistent by its own principles, and there is in it a kernel of truth: life on earth really is affected by the heavenly bodies, – the tide by the influence of the moon, the weather by the sun, and so on. That is not to say that the fate of man really is decided by Mars passing through Orion’s Belt or what have you, only that there really is an influence of the heavenly bodies on earth, and, though infinitesimal, of earth on the other heavenly bodies.

Vaughan’s commerce is more metaphysical in nature, the idea that there is a sort of spiritual sympathy or influence between the stars and something ‘here below’, not so much physically as in the mind of the person looking at it. For Vaughan this is a perfectly natural idea, given that both man – and consciousness itself – and the star are creations of God. In fact, in some sense, it is the perception of the perceiver that calls forth the movement of the star, or percieves it as moving as it does.

And what then does the star call forth from the perceiver – or, to put it another way, what is the benefit of a man to look at a star? First, Vaughan explains, it is a kind of proof of life that one sees and notices the star. Second, one admires its great desire, and it kindles in one such a desire. It is such a desire that God wants to kindle in men’s hearts, and indeed that will help them come closer to him. Many readers will think of the star of Bethlehem that drew its viewers towards an encounter with the living God.

As always in Vaughan’s poetry, what may be metaphysical is never only metaphorical. His poetry was as inspired by his walks in the Welsh hills as by his theology. Vaughan is not using his stargazing as a metaphor for man’s relationship with God, only saying that that they are like each other in nature – and that they may have the same motivating force behind them.