“Thomas Traherne” may have been a multiple choice answer on a test I took as an undergraduate. If it was, I can’t remember. But something about the name resonated with me when I came across it in a book I am reviewing and I promptly looked it up and immediately began reading Traherne’s book Centuries of Meditations.

Traherne is commonly known as one of the major metaphysical poets, though his work is overshadowed by that of Donne, Herbert, and Marvell and doesn’t often show up in Literature anthologies. Traherne was a devout Anglican and a parish priest educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, but nothing about his writing is dry or expected.

In fact, Centuries has a startlingly intimate feel. It begins by addressing both its reader and itself.

An empty book is like an infant’s soul, in which anything may be written. It is capable of all things, but containeth nothing. I have a mind to fill this with profitable wonders. And since Love made you put it into my hands I will fill it with those Truths you love without knowing them: with those things which, if it be possible, shall shew my Love; to you in communicating most enriching Truths: to Truth in exalting her beauties in such a Soul.

We all have had the experience of feeling as if a book was written expressly for us, as if we were its first reader in history. It is easy to feel that way with Traherne’s meditations, which direct their breathtaking lyricism at the reader’s own perceptions:

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.

Each meditation is an intricate prose poem that performs the kind of measured attentiveness it prescribes. I can’t recommend Traherne’s profitable wonders more heartily–check out the CCEL version here.