For more than 200 years, Thomas Traherne's Centuries of Meditations was undiscovered and unpublished. The manuscript passed through many hands before finally being compiled into a book by bookseller and scholar BERTRAM DOBELL (1842-1914) in 1908. Centuries is a collection of poems written to express the rapture of life lived in accordance with God. Yet Dobell is careful to state that even though Traherne was a clergyman, there is plenty of beauty to be found in his poetry that does not require specific belief in Christianity or in God. Readers of many ages and persuasions will be touched by Traherne's passages on love and belonging.
Centuries of Meditations is a devotional manual from the English literary Thomas Traherne; undiscovered for over 200 years, this manuscript was first published in the early 20th century. During his lifetime Thomas Traherne was primarily famed for his verses, which gained a fair degree of recognition among readers of his era. A deeply religious man, Traherne embarked on reflections pertinent to Christian faith, such as the soul of man, and how believers attain closeness with the Lord God. A naturalist, Traherne frequently alludes to the beauty and harmony of nature which he viewed as the pure and untrammeled embodiment of God's creation. Centuries of Meditation is a compilation of devotional thoughts, arranged into five distinct centuries. At times contemplative, at times resemblant of a sermon, we find here Traherne at his most poignant. The nature of man's soul and its connection to the divine, sees the author take on mystical and deeply thoughtful lines of expression.
2019 Reprint of 1960 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition software. The work for which Traherne is best known today is the Centuries, 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. 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.
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