Thomas Traherne
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"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; I knew by intuition those things which since my apostacy I collected again by the highest reason."--Centuries of Meditations by Thomas Traherne |
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Thomas Traherne (1636/37 – 1674) was an English poet, clergyman, theologian, and religious writer.
Little information is known about his life. Traherne's poetry, often associated with that of the metaphysical poets, was forgotten for two centuries after his death—kept among the private papers of the Skipps family of Ledbury, Herefordshire, until 1888.
When, in the winter of 1896–1897, two manuscript volumes containing his poems and meditations were discovered by chance for sale in a street bookstall, the poems were initially thought to be the work of Traherne's contemporary Henry Vaughan (1621–1695).
Only through research was his identity uncovered and his work prepared for publication under his name. As a result, much of his work was not published until the first decade of the 20th century.
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