Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Does Thomas Traherne have a poem in which he discusses God's discipline and love?

Thomas Traherne was an English poet, writer, mystic, theologian, and clergyman. Not much is known about him, and most of the information comes from sources who praised his religious writings and wrote some details about Traherne's life. As far as his education is considered, Traherne graduated from Brasenose College at Oxford and received a bachelor’s degree in divinity. He was a deeply religious and and pious man and dedicated his life to religion, working at a few churches and writing religious and metaphysical texts and poems. According to several sources, Traherne died from smallpox.
His prose and poetry are described as light and simple but at the same time intelligent, and his typical themes are divinity, Christianity, virtue, childhood joy and innocence, the concepts of “goodness” and “felicity,” the beauty of nature and the natural world, the power of creation, God's love, and people's relationship with God.
In his life he managed to publish only one complete work, titled Roman Forgeries, which was published in 1693. His other, more significant works, such as Christian Ethicks (full title: Christian Ethicks or, Divine morality opening the way to blessedness, by the rules of virtue and reason), were published after his death, while his poetry was discovered much later, in the 1800s, and published in the 1900s; these include the 1903 poetry collection The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne, Poems of Felicity, and the 1908 collection of texts and poems Centuries of Meditations, which became perhaps his most notable and important work.
Traherne often wrote about God’s love and its power. He didn’t write one specific poem that generally discusses this phenomenon; instead, he wrote several texts and poems in which he references the love of God and presents his philosophical and theological views and opinions. For instance, in the poem titled "The Recovery," he writes,

In all His works, in all His ways,We must His glory see and praise;And since our pleasure is the end,We must His goodness and His love attend.

In his poem "The Approach," he indirectly refers to God’s love and discipline:

These thoughts His goodness long beforePrepared as precious and celestial storeWith curious art in me inlaid,That childhood might itself alone be saidMy Tutor, Teacher, Guide to be,Instructed then even by the Deitie.

You can read all of Traherne's poems here.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/thomas-traherne

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