By Thomas Traherne

These little limbs,
    These eyes and hands which here I find,
These rosy cheeks wherewith my life begins,
    Where have ye been? behind
What curtain were ye from me hid so long?
Where was, in what abyss, my speaking tongue?

         When silent I   
    So many thousand, thousand years
Beneath the dust did in a chaos lie,
    How could I smiles or tears,
Or lips or hands or eyes or ears perceive?
Welcome ye treasures which I now receive.

         I that so long
    Was nothing from eternity,
Did little think such joys as ear or tongue
    To celebrate or see:
Such sounds to hear, such hands to feel, such feet,
Beneath the skies on such a ground to meet.

         New burnished joys,
    Which yellow gold and pearls excel!
Such sacred treasures are the limbs in boys,
    In which a soul doth dwell;
Their organizèd joints and azure veins
More wealth include than all the world contains.

         From dust I rise,
    And out of nothing now awake;
These brighter regions which salute mine eyes,
    A gift from God I take.
The earth, the seas, the light, the day, the skies,
The sun and stars are mine if those I prize.

         Long time before
    I in my mother’s womb was born,
A God, preparing, did this glorious store,
    The world, for me adorn.
Into this Eden so divine and fair,
So wide and bright, I come His son and heir.

         A stranger here
    Strange things doth meet, strange glories see;
Strange treasures lodged in this fair world appear,
    Strange all and new to me;
But that they mine should be, who nothing was,
That strangest is of all, yet brought to pass.

• Living
• Religion

Poet Bio

Little is known about British clergyman Thomas Traherne’s life. He may have grown up near the border of Wales. He studied at Oxford University and published one book, however, much of his poetry was never printed during his lifetime. More than 200 years after his death, some of his manuscripts were discovered in a bookseller’s stall and published in 1903 as Poetical Works. Another manuscript was discovered in the British Museum and published in 1910. In 1967, more poems were found, this time in a dump by a man looking for used auto parts, and published as Commentaries of Heaven: The Poems (1989). Considered a metaphysical poet in the tradition of John Donne and George Herbert, Traherne often addressed faith, divinity, and the innocence of childhood, using peculiar syntax and repetition to achieve incantatory effects. See More By This Poet

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