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<< This will sound like nit-picking, or as if I'm overly concerned with categories rather than works. Vaughn's poem is very great, but it is a religious allegory. >> To a degree, Fred, but I'd see it as more a tapestry poem, like the images deployed by Chaucer in the Knight's Tale -- the smiler with the knife beneath the cloak -- which I suspect Vaughan had in mind when he composed "The World". R. << doctrine, which is the same at the end as at the beginning. >> I think this is something Vaughan picked up from Herbert -- knowing where a poem will end, even before you start it. It's more of an artistic problem than a doctrinal one. Donne was a good believing Anglican too, but he often didn't know where his poems would end when he started them. R.