Usk River Valley

Arguably the most celebrated poet associated with the River Usk is Henry Vaughan the Silurist and poet (1622 to 1695). He was born with his twin brother in the small town of Usk.His beloved brother died while fighting in the Civil War. The last part of his title taken from the name of the Silures tribe pool inhabited the upland area of the Brecon Beacons at the time of the Roman invasion.  He is buried in the churchyard of Llansantffraed a few miles outside Brecon and appropriately located on the banks of the River Usk. his collection of verses entitled the Swan of Usk celebrated the beautiful characteristics of a river he particularly loved. 

Welsh poet. He published several volumes of metaphysical religious verse and prose devotions. His best-known work, Silex Scintillans: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (1650), contains the exquisite short poem 'The Retreat'. His mystical outlook on nature influenced later poets, including William Wordsworth.

Vaughan was born in Llansantffraed, Brecknockshire, and studied at Oxford and then in London. He worked as a physician in Brecon and Newton-by-Usk, and served in the Royalist forces during the English Civil War. His first book, the secular Poems, with the Tenth Satire of Juvenal Englished, appeared in 1646. Olor Iscanus/The Swan of Usk, a collection of poems and translations, was published without his consent in 1651. About this time he had a serious illness which led to deep spiritual experiences, and his subsequent writings were almost entirely religious.

Henry Vaughan was born in 1621 to Thomas Vaughan and Denise Morgan in Newton-upon-Usk in Breconshire, Wales. In 1638, it is assumed, he entered Oxford University with his twin brother Thomas who gained fame as a hermetic philosopher and alchemist. In 1640 Vaughan left Oxford to study law in London for two years. His studies were interrupted by the Civil War in which Vaughan briefly took the King's side. He is thought to have served on the Royalist side in South Wales sometime around 1645. Vaughan returned to Breconshire in 1642 as secretary to Judge Lloyd, and later began to practice medicine. By 1646 he had probably married Catherine Wise with whom he was to have a son and three daughters.
        In 1646 Poems with the Tenth Satire of Juvenal Englished was published. This was followed in 1650 by the first part of Silex Scintillans, a collection of religious poems. Silex Scintillans, meaning 'The Fiery Flint' or 'The Flashing Flint', “refers to the stony hardness of his heart, from which divine steel strikes fire.”¹ The following year, 1651, Olor Iscanus, or The Swan of Usk, a collection of secular poetry with four prose translations, was published. Named for the river Usk which flows near his hometown, Olor Iscanus contains "rhapsodic passages about natural beauty."²
        Silex Scintillans was reprinted in 1655 with a second, additional part. In its preface Vaughan attributed the transformation to a spiritual awakening brought about by the poems of 'the blessed man, Mr. George Herbert'. Vaughan's inspired religious poetry, on which his reputation chiefly rests, is indeed reminiscent of Herbert's The Temple.
        After the death of his first wife, Vaughan married her sister Elizabeth possibly in 1655. Vaughan had another son, and three more daughters by his second wife. Vaughan published a few more works, including Thalia rediviva (1678), none of which equalled the fire of Silex. He died on April 23, 1695, and was buried in Llansantffraed churchyard.

The source of the Usk River at SN 818239 can be found in a large expanse of rough boggy ground situated beneath the impressive escarpment of Fan Foel in the Carmarthen Fans. as it nears the Usk Reservoir its course follows and in effect forms the boundary between what is now referred to as Powys and Dyfed, previously Breconshire and Carmarthenshire. Where it passes under the bridge entitled Pont ar Wysg (Bridge over the Usk) that carries the road to Llanddeusant this boundary is celebrated by a modest sign at a location that offers a particularly pleasant picnic location for families with fine views of the Carmarthen Fans on the horizon to the south. 

shortly afterwards it enters the cold expanse of the Usk Reservoir eventually regaining its original form below for down a wall and flowing onwards amongst farmland in the direction of Trecastle and then Brecon itself. in particular between Trecastle and Sennybridge there is a rather lovely humpbacked bridge which bears the name of a nearby farm entitled Pont Pantysgallog which is well worth a visit if you are passing by. SN 904293