THOMAS TRAHERNE AND THE SPIRITUAL POETS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
I
The powerful religious upheaval in England which reached its
culmination during the two middle decades of the seventeenth century,
profoundly stirred both the upper and lower intellectual strata of
society. It fused and organized men on the one hand, and carried them
beyond themselves; and on the other hand it broke up settled habits of
thought, swept away many customs and practices which had become almost
irresistible subconscious influences, and left those who were in any
way morally and intellectually defective at the mercy of chance
currents and eddies. As a result there appeared a strange medley of
tiny sects. These groups, seething with enthusiasm, scattered pretty
much over England, unorganized or loosely organized, generally gathered
about some influential psychopathic leader, were lumped together in the
public mind and named "Ranters."[1] They are by no means a negligible
phenomenon of the period. They reveal the back-wash of the spiritual
movement, which in the main went steadily onward. They exhibit, in
their loose and unmoralized freedom, the inherent dangers which attach
to the proclamation of spiritual liberty, and they furnish a clear
historical illustration of the truth that progress toward a religion
grounded upon the inner life of man can only be slowly and painfully
achieved.
{321}
The religious poets of this period, on the other hand, furnish clear
evidence of the constructive, organizing and fusing power of these
newly dawning spiritual insights, as they worked upon the minds of
highly gifted and endowed persons. Poets are not Reformers. They do
not consider themselves "commissioned" to reconstruct old systems of
thought, old forms of faith and old types of church-organization, or to
re-interpret the Gospel, the way of salvation and the communion of
saints. Their mission is a different one, though it is no less
spiritual and, in the best sense of the word, no less practical. The
poets are always among the first to feel the direction of spiritual
currents, and they are very sure voices of the deeper hopes and
aspirations of their epoch. All the religious poets of this particular
period reveal very clearly the influence of the ideas which were
central in the teaching of the spiritual leaders whom we have been
studying. The reader of Milton needs no argument to convince him of
the fact that, however far removed the great poet was in most points of
view from the contemporary Quakers, he nevertheless insisted
emphatically, as they did, on the illumination of the soul by a Light
within; "a celestial Light," he calls it in _Paradise Lost_, which
shines inward and irradiates the mind through all her powers, and
supplies an inward sight of things invisible to sense[2]--a Light which
steadily increases as it is used by the obedient soul.[3] The origin
of this inward Light, according to Milton's thought, is the eternal
Word of God, who is before all worlds and who is the source of all
revelation, whether inward or outward: the Spirit that prefers
Before all temples the upright heart and pure.[4]
The minor religious poets of the period had not, however, formed their
intellectual outlook under the imperial sway of theological systems of
thought in anything like {322} the degree that Milton had. They
reflect the freer and less rigidly formulated currents of thought.
"All divinity is love, or wonder," John Donne wrote in one of his
poems. No phrase could better express the intense religious life of
the group of spiritual poets in England who interpreted in beautiful,
often immortal, form this religion of the spirit, this glowing
consciousness that the world and all its fulness is God's and that
eternity is set within the soul of man, who never is himself until he
finds his Life in God.
E'en like two little bank-dividing brooks,
That wash the pebbles with their wanton streams,
And having rang'd and search'd a thousand nooks,
Meet both at length in silver-breasted Thames,
Where in a greater current they conjoin:
So I my best beloved's am; so He is mine.
E'en so we met: and after long pursuit,
E'en so we joined; we both became entire:
No need for either to renew a suit,
For I was flax and He was flames of fire.
Our firm united souls did more than twine;
So I my best beloved's am; so He is mine.[5]
Whatever these poets, Herbert, Vaughan, Traherne, Crashaw, Quarles, say
of the soul and its fuller life, they say quite naturally in terms of
love and wonder. Religion has become for them the flowering of the
soul; the flooding of the whole being with health and joy; the
consummation of life; and they tell of it as lovers tell of their
discovery and their joy.
Oh mightie love! man is one world and hath
Another to attend him.[6]
We have here in these poets, as in the writings of Whichcote and Smith,
a type of religion which is primarily concerned with the liberation and
winning of the whole of life, a thing which, they all tell us, can be
done only in conscious parallelism with the set of eternal currents.
These minor prophets of seventeenth century English literature have
often been treated as mystics, and there {323} is in all of them,
except George Herbert, a rich strand of mystical religion, but their
mysticism is only an element, a single aspect, of a very much wider and
completer type of religion which includes all the strands that compose
what I have been calling "spiritual religion"--an inner flooding of the
life with a consciousness of God, a rational apprehension of the soul's
inherent relation to the Divine, and a transforming discovery of the
meaning of life through the revelation in Christ, which sets all one's
being athrob with love and wonder.
Eternal God! O thou that only art
The sacred fountain of eternal light,
And blessed loadstone of my better part,
O thou, my heart's desire, my soul's delight,
Reflect upon my soul and touch my heart,
And then my heart shall prize no good above thee;
And then my soul shall know thee; knowing, love thee.[7]
II
Thomas Traherne is one of the best and most adequate representatives,
in this literary group, of this type of religion. He was profoundly
influenced by the revival of Plato and Plotinus, and by the writings of
the religious Humanists and he had absorbed, consciously or
unconsciously, the ideas and ideals which appear and reappear in the
widespread movement which I have been tracing. He was a pure and noble
soul, a man of deep experience and fruitful meditation, the master of a
rare and wonderful style, and we shall find in his writings a glowing
appreciation and a luminous expression of this type of inner, spiritual
religion.
He was born about the year 1636, probably at Hereford, the son of a
poor shoemaker, but of a notable and well-endowed family line. He took
no pains to inform the world of his outward history and we are left
with guesses as to most of the details of his earthly career, but he
has himself supplied us with an unusually full account of his {324}
inward life during the early years of it. "Once I remember," he says,
"I think I was about four years old when I thus reasoned with myself,
sitting in a little obscure room of my father's poor house: If there be
a God certainly He must be infinite in Goodness, and I was prompted to
this by a real whispering instinct of Nature."[8] Whereupon the child
wonders why, if God is so rich, he himself is so poor, possessed of "so
scanty and narrow a fortune, enjoying few and obscure comforts," but he
tells us that as soon as he was old enough to discover the glory of the
world he was in, and old enough for his soul to have "_sudden returns
into itself_," there was no more questioning about poverty and narrow
fortunes. All the wealth of God was his--
I nothing in the world did know
But 'twas divine.[9]
As nobody has better caught the infinite glory of being a child, and as
nobody in literature has more successfully "set the little child in the
midst," than has Traherne, it may be well to let him tell us here in
his splendid enthusiasm what it is to be a child and what the eyes of a
child can see. He shall do it, first in his magnificent prose and then
in his fine and simple verse.
"Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious
apprehensions of the world, than I when I was a child. All appeared
new, and strange at first, inexpressibly rare and delightful and
beautiful. I was a little stranger, which at my entrance into the
world was saluted and surrounded with innumerable joys. My knowledge
was Divine. . . . My very ignorance was advantageous. I seemed as one
brought into the Estate of Innocence. All things were spotless and
pure and glorious: yea, and infinitely mine, and joyful and precious.
I knew not that there were any sins, or complaints or laws. I dreamed
not of poverties, contentions or vices. All tears {325} and quarrels
were hidden from mine eyes. Everything was at rest, free and immortal.
I knew nothing of sickness or death or rents or exaction, either for
tribute or bread. In the absence of these I was entertained like an
Angel with the works of God in their splendour and glory, I saw all the
peace of Eden; Heaven and Earth did sing my Creator's praises, and
could not make more melody to Adam, than to me. All Time was Eternity,
and a perpetual Sabbath. Is it not strange, that an infant should be
heir of the whole World, and see those mysteries which the books of the
learned never unfold?
"The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped,
nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to
everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as
gold; the gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees
when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished
me, their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and
almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things.
The Men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged seem!
Immortal Cherubims! And young men glittering and sparkling Angels, and
maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty! Boys and girls
tumbling in the street, and playing, were moving jewels. I knew not
that they were born or should die. But all things abided eternally as
they were in their proper places. Eternity was manifest in the Light
of the Day, and something infinite behind everything appeared; which
talked with my expectation and moved my desire. The city seemed to
stand in Eden, or to be built in Heaven. The streets were mine, the
temple was mine, the people were mine, their clothes and gold and
silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, fair skins and ruddy
faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars,
and all the World was mine; and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it.
. . . So that with much ado I was corrupted, and made to learn the
dirty devices of this world. Which {326} now I unlearn, and become, as
it were, a little child again that I may enter into the Kingdom of
God."[10]
How like an Angel came I down!
How bright are all things here!
When first among His works I did appear
O how their Glory did me crown!
The World resembled His _Eternity_
In which my soul did walk;
And everything that I did see
Did with me talk.[11]
Long time before
I in my mother's womb was born,
A God preparing did this glorious store,
The world, for me adorne.
Into this Eden so divine and fair
So wide and bright, I come His son and heir.[12]
Like Vaughan, who, in his "angel-infancy," could
In these weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity,
and who
Felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness,[13]
Traherne not only saw, in his paradise-innocence, the glory of the
earth and sky--the streets paved with golden stones, and boys and girls
with lovely shining faces--but he also felt that he was part of a
deeper world which lay about his infancy and wooed him with love.
O Lord I wonder at Thy Love,
Which did my Infancy so early move.[14]
And out of this childhood experience, which many a meditative child can
match, he insists that God visited him.
He did Approach, He did me woo;
I wonder that my God this thing would do.
He in our childhood with us walks,
And with our thoughts Mysteriously He talks;
He often visiteth our Minds.[15]
{327}
I know of no one who has borne a louder testimony than Traherne to the
divine inheritances and spiritual possibilities of the new-born child,
or who has more emphatically denied the fiction of total depravity: "I
speak it in the presence of God," he says, "and of our Lord Jesus
Christ; in my pure primitive Virgin Light, while my apprehensions were
natural and unmixed, I cannot remember but that I was ten thousand
times more prone to good and excellent things than to evil."[16] And
he adds this impressive word on the doctrine of inheritance: "It is not
our parents' loins, so much as our parents' lives, that enthrals and
blinds us."[17]
After a happy childhood, during which "The Earth did undertake the
office of a Priest,"[18] and when his soul was
A living endless eye
Just bounded with the sky,
Whose power, whose act, whose essence was to see,[19]
he entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in the year 1652, being made B.A.
in 1656, M.A. in 1661, and Bachelor of Divinity in 1669. He was
admitted in 1657 to the Rectory of Credenhill, near Hereford, where he
remained for about ten years, and in 1667 he was made chaplain to Sir
Orlando Bridgman, in whose service he died in 1674, and was buried
"under the reading-desk" in the church at Teddington near Hampton Court.
During his lifetime he published _Roman Forgeries_ (1673), an
unimportant work, and had begun the publication of his _Christian
Ethics_, which appeared, after his death, in 1675. His _Poems_ and his
_Centuries of Meditations_ remained in MS. unknown until they were
discovered in a London bookstall about the year 1897, and their
authorship was proved by Bertram Dobell who published the _Poems_ in
1903, and the _Centuries of Meditations_ in 1908. There still remains
in MS. an octavo volume of meditations and devotions.
Traherne's poems show that he always dwelt near the {328} gate of
Heaven and was easily aware of the "ancient Light of Eden." An
accidental bit of gossip, reported in John Aubrey's _Miscellanies_,
indicates that he was subject to psychical experiences of an unusual
sort, and the poet himself has reported an impressive crisis-experience
when he chose his destiny and settled his preference for inward
treasures, even though it meant, as with George Fox, the wearing of a
leather suit.
"When I came into the country, and being seated among silent trees, and
meads and hills, had all my time in mine own hands, I resolved to spend
it all, whatever it cost me, in the search of happiness, and to satiate
that burning thirst which Nature had enkindled in me from my youth. In
which I was so resolute, that I chose rather to live upon ten pounds a
year, and to go in leather clothes, and feed upon bread and water, so
that I might have all my time clearly to myself, than to keep many
thousands per annum in an estate of life where my time would be
devoured in care and labour. And God was so pleased to accept of that
desire, that from that time to this, I have had all things plentifully
provided for me, without any care at all, my very study of Felicity
making me more to prosper, than all the care in the whole world. So
that through His blessing I live a free and a kingly life as if the
world were turned again into Eden, or much more, as it is at this
day."[20]
Like his predecessors in this faith, Traherne is never tired of
declaring the infiniteness of the human soul. Eternity is in the human
heart, if only the way of the open door is taken, if only the eyes are
opened to see. God, he says, has made our spirits "centres in
eternity," opening upon "innumerable infinities." The Ocean is but a
drop of a bucket to the immensity of the soul, with its abysmal deeps
and its immeasurable capacities. It is the very essence and being of
the soul to feel infinity, for "God is ever more near to us than we are
to ourselves, so that we cannot feel our own souls without feeling
Him."[21] "You are never," he says, "your true self, till you live
{329} by your soul more than by your body, and you never live by your
soul until you feel its incomparable excellence."[22] Its nobility is
revealed by its insatiable hungers, its surpassing dignity is declared
by its endless wants, its inability to live by bread alone. "As by the
seed we conjecture what plant will arise, and know by the acorn what
tree will grow forth, or by the eagle's egg what kind of bird; so do we
by the powers of the soul upon earth, know what kind of Being, Person,
and Glory will be in the Heavens, where its latent powers shall be
turned into Act, its inclinations shall be completed, and its
capacities filled."[23]
Not only in a primitive Eden, but in the world as we know it, with its
black and white, man always bears within himself the mark of a heavenly
origin, and has the quickening Seed of God in the depth of his soul:
"The Image of God is seated in the lineaments of the soul." Man is the
greatest of all miracles; he is "a mirror of all Eternity."[24] His
thoughts run out to everlasting; he is made for spiritual supremacy and
has within himself an inner, hidden life greater than anything else in
the universe.[25] We are "nigh of kin to God" and "nigh of kin
To those pure things we find
In His great mind
Who made the world."[26]
There is
A Spiritual World standing within
An Universe enclosed in Skin.[27]
With the same enthusiasm with which he proclaims the divine origin and
the heavenly connections of the soul, Traherne also proclaims the glory
and beauty of the visible world as a revelation of God.
Eternity stooped down to nought
And in the earth its likeness sought.[28]
The world is not God, for He is Spirit, but the world is "a glorious
mirror" in which the verities of religion are {330} revealed and in
which the face of God is at least partially unveiled.[29] It is here
in this "mirror" that the clairvoyant eye discovers God's being,
perceives His wisdom, goodness, and power, guesses out the footsteps of
His love, and finds promises and pledges of the larger fulfilment of
that love. Here in the world, which is full of "remainders of
Paradise," is surely the visible porch or gate of Eternity.[30] It is
easy to believe that God has given us His Son when once we have seen
the richness of the world which He has given us.[31] But the world is
never "ours" until we learn how to see it and enjoy it in its beauty,
even in the most common things, and until we discover that all its
service and all its excellency are spiritual: "Pigs eat acorns, but
neither consider the sun that gave them life, nor the influences of the
heavens by which they were nourished, nor the very root of the tree
from whence they came. This being the work of Angels who in a wide and
clear light see even the sea that gave them [the acorns] moisture: And
feed upon that acorn spiritually while they know the ends for which it
was created, and feast upon all these as upon a World of Joys within
it: while to ignorant swine that eat the shell it is an empty husk of
no taste nor delightful savour."[32]
Men, as well as angels, can learn to use the world spiritually--can
learn to see how rough, common things are part of "the divine
exchequer"; how a grain of sand exhibiteth the wisdom of God and
manifesteth His glory.[33] With this prelude, Traherne gives his
glowing account of the true, spiritual way to enjoy the world.
"Your enjoyment of the world is never right, till every morning you
awake in Heaven; see yourself in your Father's Palace; and look upon
the skies, the earth, and the air as Celestial Joys: having such a
reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the Angels. The bride of
a monarch, in her husband's chamber, hath no such causes of delight as
you.
"You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself {331} 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. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as
misers do in gold, and Kings in sceptres, you never enjoy the world.
"Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your
jewels; till you are as familiar with the ways of God in all Ages as
with your walk and table; till you are intimately acquainted with that
shady nothing out of which the world was made; till you love men so as
to desire their happiness with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own;
till you delight in God for being good to all; you never enjoy the
world. Till you more feel it than your private estate, and are more
present in the hemisphere, considering the glories and the beauties
there, than in your own house; till you remember how lately you were
made, and how wonderful it was when you came into it: and more rejoice
in the palace of your glory, than if it had been made but to-day
morning.
"Yet further, you never enjoy the world aright, till you so love the
beauty of enjoying it, that you are covetous and earnest to persuade
others to enjoy it. And so perfectly hate the abominable corruption of
men in despising it, that you had rather suffer the flames of Hell than
willingly be guilty of their error. . . . The world is a mirror of
infinite beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of Majesty, yet no
man regards it. It is a region of Light and Peace, did not men
disquiet it. It is the Paradise of God. It is more to man since he is
fallen than it was before. It is the place of Angels and the Gate of
Heaven. When Jacob waked out of his dream, he said, 'God is here, and
I wist it not. How dreadful is this place! This is none other than
the House of God, and the Gate of Heaven.'"[34]
But notwithstanding his exuberant and overflowing joy in creation,
Traherne is conscious that the world has {332} its "dreggy parts," that
it has been "muddied" by man's misuse of it, and that the havoc of sin
is apparent. The light which shined in infancy becomes eclipsed as the
customs and manners of life close down over it and cover it. Men's
mouths are full of talk of fleeting, vulgar, and worthless things, and
they speak no syllable of those celestial and stable treasures which
form the only wealth of life. The emphasis in education is on the
wrong things. So with much ado the innocent child is "corrupted and
made to learn the dirty devices of the world," which he must again
unlearn and become a little child once more in the Kingdom of God.[35]
The taint, however, is not in the native structure of the soul, it is
not through a biological transmission, it is due to false training--it
is from the parents' lives rather than their loins. Let parents, he
says, who desire holy children learn to make them possessors of divine
things _betimes_. It is "deadly barbarous and uncouth" to "put grubs
and worms" into little children's minds, to teach them to say this
house is mine, this bauble is a jewel, this gew-gaw is a fine thing,
this rattle makes music, when they ought to be made instead to see the
spiritual glory of the earth and sky, the beauty of life, the sweetness
and nobility of Nature, and to live joyously, like birds, in union and
communion with God. I am sure, he concludes, that barbarous people
that go naked come nearer to Adam, God, and the Angels, in the
simplicity of their wealth, than do many among us who partake of what
we nick-name civility and mode.[36] The entire work of redemption is,
thus, to restore man to himself, to bring him once more to the Tree of
Life, to enable him to discover the glory all about him, to reveal to
him the real values of things, and to bring to birth within him an
immortal love. The true healing of the soul is always through the
birth of love. Before a soul loves, it lives only to itself; as soon
as love is born it lives beyond itself and finds its life in the object
of its love. It is Christ who first reveals the full measure of love,
who makes us see the one adequate Object of love, and who {333} forges
within our human spirits the invisible bonds of a love that binds us
forever to Him who so loved us. Here in Him--"a Man loving all the
world, a God dying for mankind"[37]--we see that we are infinitely
beloved, that the foundations of an eternal Friendship are laid, that
God is infinitely prone to love, and that true love spares nothing for
the sake of what it loves--"O miraculous and eternal Godhead suffering
on a Cross for me!"[38] "That Cross is a tree set on fire with
invisible flame which illuminateth all the world. The flame is love:
the love in His bosom that died upon it."[39]
But there is no salvation for us in the Cross until it kindles the same
flame of love in us, until that immeasurable love of His becomes an
irresistible power in us, so that we henceforth live unto Him that
loved us. It must, if it is to be efficacious, shift all our values
and set us to loving as He loved--"He who would not in the same cases
do the same things Jesus Christ hath done can never be saved," for love
is never timorous.[40] The love of Christ is to dwell within us and
every man is to be the object of it. God and we are to become one
spirit, that is, one in will and one in desire. Christ must live
within us. We must be filled with the Holy Ghost, which is the God of
Love; we must be of the same mind with Christ Jesus and led by His
Spirit, and we must henceforth treat every man in respect to the
greatness of Christ's love--this is salvation in Traherne's conception
of it, and holiness and happiness are the same thing.[41] The Cross
has not done its complete work for us until we can say: "O Christ, I
see thy crown of thorns in every eye; thy bleeding, naked, wounded body
in every soul; thy death liveth in every memory; thy crucified person
is embalmed in every affection; thy pierced feet are bathed in every
one's tears and it is my privilege to enter with thee into every
soul."[42]
However contemplative and mystical the bent of Traherne's mind may have
been, he always finds the {334} terminus of spiritual life in action,
indeed, in brotherly service, in what he calls "blessed operations."
Speaking apparently of himself, he finely says: "He thought it a vain
thing to see glorious principles buried in books, unless he did remove
them into his understanding; and a vain thing to remove them into his
understanding unless he did revive them and raise them up with
continual _exercise_. Let this therefore be the first principle of
your soul--that to have no principles or to live beside them is equally
miserable. Philosophers are not those that speak but do great
things."[43] "It is," he writes in words which sound like those of his
contemporary Winstanley, "it is an indelible principle of Eternal
truth, that practice and exercise is the Life of all. Should God give
you worlds and laws and treasures, and worlds upon worlds, and Himself
also in the Divinest manner, if you will be lazy you lose all. The
soul is made for action and cannot rest till it be employed. . . . If
therefore you would be happy, your life must be as full of operation as
God of treasure."[44]
Love, once kindled in the soul, is the mother of all heroic actions;
love knows how to abound and overflow--the man who has lighted his life
from Christ's love is constant in trials, patient in sufferings,
courageous in assaults, prudent in difficulties, victorious and
triumphant in action.[45]
Traherne shares with Boehme and with the Cambridge Platonists the view
that Eternity is as much here as anywhere. Those Christians, he
thinks, who put off felicity and defer their enjoyment with long delays
"are to be much suspected."[46] "'Tis not," so he states his law,
"change of place, but glorious principles well practised that establish
Heaven in the life and soul. An angel will be happy anywhere and a
devil miserable, because the principles of the one are always good, of
the other, bad. From the centre to the utmost bounds of the
everlasting hills all is Heaven before God, and full of {335} treasure;
and he that walks like God in the midst of them is blessed."[47] "You
are in Heaven everywhere."[48] The real business of life, as he
elsewhere declares, is to "piece this life with the life of Heaven, to
see it as one with all Eternity, a part of it, a life within it,"[49]
which reminds us of Vaughan's great words:
I saw Eternity the other night
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
As calm as it was bright:
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv'n by the spheres,
Like a vast shadow mov'd; in which the world
And all her train were hurl'd.[50]
And with much penetration Traherne tells us that Eternity is not an
endless addition of "times "--a weak infinite series of durations, but
rather a Reality in which all true realities abide, and which retains
in a present now all beginnings and all endings.[51] Eternity is just
the real world for which we were made and which we enter through the
door of love.
It is a spiritual world within,
A living world and nearer far of kin
To God than that which first He made.
While that doth fade
This therefore ever shall endure
Within the soul as more divine and pure.[52]
[1] See my _Studies in Mystical Religion_, chap. xix.
[2] Book III. lines 51-55.
[3] Book III. lines 194-197.
[4] Book I. line 18. Since this chapter was written, Alden Sampson's
_Studies in Milton_ (New York, 1913) has been published. His valuable
chapter on "Milton's Confession of Faith" reveals in Milton a very wide
acquaintance with the ideas which I have been tracing, and shows by a
vast number of quotations how frequently the poet used these ideas
sympathetically.
[5] Francis Quarles' "My Beloved is Mine."
[6] George Herbert's poem "Man."
[7] Francis Quarles' "Light."
[8] _Centuries of Meditations_ (London, 1908), iii. 16. For details of
his life and for the story of the discovery of his writings, see the
Introduction to _The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne_ (1903) by
Bertram Dobell.
[9] Traherne's pom "Wonder," iii.
[10] _Centuries of Meditations_, iii. 1, 2 and 3.
[11] "Wonder," i.
[12] "The Salutation"
[13] Vaughan's "The Retreat."
[14] Traherne's "The Approach."
[15] _Ibid._
[16] _Centuries of Meditations_, iii. 8.
[17] _Ibid._
[18] "Dumbness."
[19] "The Preparative."
[20] _Centuries of Meditations_, iii. 46.
[21] _Ibid._ ii. 81. See also ii. 70 and 83.
[22] _Centuries of Meditations_, ii. 92.
[23] _Ibid._ iv. 70.
[24] _Ibid._ i. 19, and iv. 81.
[25] _Ibid._ ii. 23.
[26] "My Spirit."
[27] "Fullness."
[28] "The Choice."
[29] _Centuries of Meditations_, ii. 17.
[30] _Ibid._ ii. 1 and 17.
[31] _Ibid._ ii. 6.
[32] _Ibid._ i. 26.
[33] _Ibid._ i. 25 and 27.
[34] _Centuries of Meditations_, i. 28-31.
[35] _Centuries of Meditations_, iii. 7 and 3.
[36] _Ibid._ iii. 11-13.
[37] _Centuries of Meditations_, i. 59.
[38] _Ibid._ i. 67 and 62.
[39] _Ibid._ i. 60.
[40] _Ibid._ iv. 59.
[41] _Ibid._ iv. 28. See also iv. 31.
[42] _Ibid._ i. 86.
[43] _Centuries of Meditations_, iv. 2.
[44] _Ibid._ iv. 95.
[45] _Christian Ethics_, chapter on "Charity."
[46] _Centuries of Meditations_, iv. 9.
[47] _Centuries of Meditations_, iv. 37.
[48] _Ibid._ iv. 38.
[49] _Ibid._ iv. 93.
[50] Vaughan's poem, "The World."
[51] _Centuries of Meditations_, v. 7-8.
[52] Traherne's poem, "Thoughts."
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