Henry Vaughan Critical Essay | Poem by Orinda

Poem by Orinda

SOURCE: "To Mr. Henry Vaughan the Silurist: Upon These and His Former Poems," in The Works in Verse and Prose Complete of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Vol. II, edited by Rev. Alexander B. Grosart, Blackburn, 1871, pp. 187-89.

Katherine Philips, who wrote under the pseudonym Orinda, was a seventeenth-century English poet whose work was highly regarded during her lifetime and by John Keats during the nineteenth century. She was hailed as "the matchless Orinda" by her contemporaries. In the following set of iambic pentameter couplets, which preface Olor Iscanus (1651), Orinda eloquently celebrates Vaughan's accomplishment as a poet.

Had I ador'd the multitude, and thence
Got an antipathy to wit and sence,
And hugg'd that fate, in hope the world would grant
'Twas good affection to be ignorant:
Yet the least ray of thy bright fancy seen,
I had converted, or excuseless been.
For each birth of thy Muse to after-times
Shall expiate for all this Age's...
(read more)