Thomas Traherne
born 1637, Hereford, Eng.
died 1674, Teddington
last of the mystical poets of the Anglican
clergy, which included most notably George
Herbert and Henry Vaughan.
The son of a shoemaker, Traherne was educated at
Brasenose College, Oxford, ordained in 1660, and
presented in 1661 to the living of Credenhill,
which he held until 1674. From 1669 to 1674
Traherne lived in London and Teddington, serving
as chaplain to Sir Orlando Bridgeman, lord
keeper from 1667 to 1672. That year he became
minister of Teddington Church, where he was
buried when he died two years later.
The only work by Traherne published during
his lifetime was Roman Forgeries (1673), an
anti-Catholic polemic. His Christian Ethicks
appeared posthumously in 1675, and his
Thanksgivings in rhythmical prose were published
anonymously as A Serious and Patheticall
Contemplation of the Mercies of God in 1699. The
greater part of Traherne’s poetry and his prose
meditations remained unknown until their
recovery in modern times. The chance discovery
in 1896 in a London street bookstall of the
manuscripts of Traherne’s Poetical Works
(published 1903) and his Centuries of
Meditations (published 1908) created a literary
sensation. The manuscript of Poems of Felicity
was subsequently found in the British Museum and
published in 1910. Other substantial manuscripts
were discovered in the 1960s and in 1997.
As a poet Traherne possessed originality of
thought and intensity of feeling, particularly
in his mystical evocations of the joy and
innocence of childhood, but he lacked discipline
in his use of metre and rhyme. Indeed, his
poetry is overshadowed by the prose work
Centuries of Meditations, in which he instructs
an acquaintance in his personal philosophy of
“felicity”; the latter was based on Traherne’s
Christian training, his retention of vivid
impressions of the wonder and joy of childhood,
and his desire to regain that sense in a mature
form.
