"The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting."
That sense of wonder glowing across the fields, the awareness that in such beauty lies harvest that nourishes, the miracle of seeds that promise the future, bounty that can be shared, and the cherishing of the hallowed grain from which comes the daily bread for which we daily pray; all this and more embedded in those waves of undulating gold that is a harvest field awaiting the blade.
Thomas Traherne is not so well known as other poets of his age, Donne, Herbert, Vaughan and Herrick. He is, however, one of the genuinely Metaphysical Poets even if his work was discovered only two centuries later; and he also happens to be a devotional poet of considerable lyricism and spiritual passion. The bounty and mercy of the Creator, beauty as a hallmark of Creation, every human made in the image of God, love as the fundamental reality of God and the fundamental requirement for human happiness, felicity, hopefulness and a celebratory disposition, these are only some of the primary supports of Traherne's spirituality.
The above quotation comes from his Centuries of Meditation. It is anthologised and lends itself to those more superficial social media memes in its positivity, quirkiness and appeal to the emotions rather than the mind. But it would be a mistake to think Traherne was an unthinking enthusiast or unreflective impressionist, reducible to such fluffy fridge magnet word bytes. The same Traherne warned, "As nothing is more easy than to think, so nothing is more difficult than to think well."
At the same time Traherne would have challenged the cerebral, cognitive, scintific mindset that seeks to reduce nature to human control through knowledge, technology and mechanics. Thinking well may include creative insight, experiment and exploration of the natural world of physics, biology and other sciences. But it is what is done with that thinking, to what ends such knowledge is applied, and for what purpose and profit, that makes such thinking creative, constructive and ultimately for human flourishing. For the strongest purpose and the most enduring profit is to know ourselves gifted with a superabundant world, prolific in gift, fecund with life and possibility, replete with fruitfulness and regularly replenished from that infinite source of love and mercy from which it was first created.
"Is it not easy to conceive the World in your Mind? To think the Heavens fair? The Sun Glorious? The Earth fruitful? The Air Pleasant? The Sea Profitable? And the Giver bountiful? Yet these are the things which it is difficult to retain. For could we always be sensible of their use and value, we should be always delighted with their wealth and glory."
Every time I look at harvest fields I think of Traherne; not just his most anthologised words about orient corn. But the luxuriant imagery and childlike wonder of one who looks on this world and sees the promise of the Kingdom of God, the new creation prefigured in the beauty, fruitfulness, providence and vergant diversity of harvest awaiting its fulfilment in the human blessing of food, enough food. His poems and Meditations are a summons to pay attention, to revel in what is around, above and beneath us.
"The world is a mirror of infinite beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of Majesty, yet no man regards it. It is a region of Light and Peace, did not men disquiet it. It is the Paradise of God."
So whatever we make of Traherne's poetry, and some of it can taste like fortified Muscat, there is significant wisdom in his cajoling and persuading, describing and evoking, on behalf of a world awaiting our attention and our gratitude, our appreciation and our wonder. And then perhaps gratitude and wonder will lead to that deeper response of worship which may be defined in Traherne's terms as wondering thankfulness to the Creator.
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