Selected Poems and Prose

by Thomas Traherne

Genres: Poetry, Philosophy, Classics, Fiction, Mysticism, Christian, Literature

416 pages, Paperback

First published February 4, 1992

About the author

Thomas Traherne, MA (1636 or 1637 – ca. 27 September 1674) was an English poet, clergyman, theologian, and religious writer. Little information is known about his life. The intense, scholarly spirituality in his writings led to his being commemorated by the Anglican Church on 10 October (the anniversary of his death in 1674).

The work for which he is best known today is the Centuries of Meditations, a collection of short paragraphs in which he reflects on Christian life and ministry, philosophy, happiness, desire and childhood. This was first published in 1908 after having been rediscovered in manuscript ten years earlier. His poetry likewise was first published in 1903 and 1910 (The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne, B.D. and Poems of Felicity). His prose works include Roman Forgeries (1673), Christian Ethics (1675), and A Serious and Patheticall Contemplation of the Mercies of God (1699).

Traherne's poetry is often associated with the metaphysical poets, even though his poetry was unknown for two centuries after his death. His manuscripts were kept among the private papers of the Skipps family of Ledbury, Herefordshire, until 1888. Then, in the winter of 1896–1897, two manuscript volumes containing his poems and meditations were discovered by chance for sale in a street bookstall. The poems were initially thought to be the work of Traherne's contemporary Henry Vaughan (1621–1695). Only through research was his identity uncovered and his work prepared for publication under his name. As a result, much of his work was not published until the first decade of the 20th century.

Traherne's writings frequently explore the glory of creation and what he perceived as his intimate relationship with God. His writing conveys an ardent, almost childlike love of God, and is compared to similar themes in the works of later poets William Blake, Walt Whitman, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. His love for the natural world is frequently expressed in his works by a treatment of nature that evokes Romanticism—two centuries before the Romantic movement.

Reviews

[Shelby Rolen · Rating 4 out of 5]

If only it were that simple Traherne.

[Pollymoore3 · Rating 5 out of 5]

“You never enjoy the world aright until the sea itself floweth in your veins…” “The corn was orient and immortal wheat…” after pages of ecstatic writing like this, you can get a bit high on reading him. Favourites: “News”; “Shadows in the Water”; “On Leaping over the Moon”; “On Christmas Day”, “Wonder”, "Poverty", "To the Same Purpose" and "Hosanna".
A lost original manuscript of Traherne's was plucked off a bonfire in the nick of time as recently as 1967. Like Julian of Norwich and Meister Eckhart, Traherne was largely forgotten until the twentieth century, perhaps because their joyful and positive message could not be heard properly till then. We need them to counterbalance the doom and gloom and sheer nastiness that is so often purveyed as "Christianity".
"You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars, and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you."
He gets a grand write-up in Phil Rickman's novel “The Wine of Angels”.

[Kaleb Rittenhouse · Rating 4 out of 5]

'come, let us go; and do not fear
the hardest way, while i am near.
my heart with thine shall mingl'd be;
thy sorrows mine, my joys with thee.
and all our labours as we go
true love shall sweeten still,
and strew our way with flowers too,
whilst we ascend the hill.'

for more info on the person traherne, poetryfoundation is a great resource.

excerpt from the poem 'rise, noble soul' by traherne.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Five stars for the poems; four for the edition, which modernizes Traherne's spelling.