Thomas Traherne

      Thomas Traherne (1636-1674) was an Anglican clergyman and mystical writer who has often been associated with the Metaphysical poets John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan and Richard Crashaw. His poetry was largely unknown until a manuscript of his poems was discovered by William Brooke in a London bookstall in 1897. Many of Traherne’s poems employ metaphors that illustrate his understanding of the relationship between the physical and spiritual worlds. “Shadows in the Water” is one of his most popular poems and an interesting illustration of his work:

            Shadows in the Water

In unexperienc'd Infancy
Many a sweet Mistake doth lye:
Mistake tho false, intending true;
A Seeming somewhat more than View;
   That doth instruct the Mind                5
   In Things that lye behind,
And many Secrets to us show
Which afterwards we come to know.

Thus did I by the Water's brink
Another World beneath me think;
And while the lofty spacious Skies
Reversed there abused mine Eyes,
   I fancy'd other Feet
   Came mine to touch or meet;
As by some Puddle I did play
Another World within it lay.

Beneath the Water People drown'd,
Yet with another Heaven crown'd,
In spacious Regions seem'd to go
As freely moving to fro:
   In bright and open Space
   I say their very face;
Eyes, Hands, and Feet they had like mine;
Another Sun did with them shine.

'Twas strange that People there should walk,
And yet I could not hear them talk:
That thro a little watry Chink,
Which one dry Ox or Horse might drink,
   We other Worlds should see,
   Yet not admitted be;
And other Confines there behold
Of Light and Darkness, Heat and Cold.

I call'd them oft, but call'd in vain'
No Speeches we could entertain:
Yet did I there expect to find
Some other World, to please my mine.
   I plainly saw by these
   A new Antipodes,
Whom, tho they were so plainly seen,
A Film kept off that stood between.

By walking Men's reversed Feet
I chanc'd another World to meet;
Tho it did not to View exceed
A Phantasm, 'tis a World indeed,
   Where Skies beneath us shine,
   And Earth by Art divine
Another face presents below
Where People's feet against Ours go.

Within the Regions of the Air,
Compassed about with Heavens fair,
Great Tracks of Lands there may be found
Enriched with Fields and fertile Ground:
   Where many numerous Hosts,
   In those far distant Coasts,
For other great and glorious Ends,
Inhabit, my yet unknown Friends.

O ye that stand upon the Brink,
Whom I so near me, thro the Chink,
With Wonder see; What faces there,
Whose feet, whose Bodies, do ye wear?
   I my Companions see
   In You, another me.
They seemed Others, but are We;
Our second Selves those Shadow be.

Look how far off those lower Skies
Extend themselves! scarce with mine Eyes
I can them reach.  O ye my Friends,
What Secret borders on those Ends?
   Are lofty Heavens hurl'd
   'Bout your inferior World?
Are ye the Representatives
Of other People's distant Lives?

Of all the Play-mates which I knew
That here I do the Image view
In other Selves; what can it mean?
But that below the purling Stream
   Some unknown Joys there be
   Laid up in store for me;
To which I shall, when that thin Skin
Is broken, be admitted in.

This ten-stanza poem moves through two points of view, the innocent imagination of the child’s and the inspired vision of the believing Christian. By the poem’s end, the speaker reconciles what he saw as a child with what he envisions through his faith in Christianity. The first stanza prefigures a pattern of the rest of the poem. The speaker begins with the line “In unexperienced infancy,” a phrase which denotes innocent childhood, and follows by announcing an obvious characteristic common to that stage of life: “Many a sweet mistake doth lie.” He says that “though false, [these mistakes are] intending true,” then describes them as “A seeming somewhat more than view.” That “seeming” is important, because what appears to be true or real to the speaker as a child isn’t, but nevertheless has value, since it “instruct[s] the mind,” by offering him a glimpse of the “many secrets” he will “come to know” in his adulthood. In the rest of the poem, the speaker recalls how in his “unexperienced infancy” his imagination interpreted the reflections he saw in a puddle and how he interprets those images as an adult.

Stanza 2 starts with the speaker picturing himself as a child, standing by the edge of a puddle and viewing the reflections the world above cast in the water at his feet. Within that puddle the child saw “Another world,” one that his imagination playfully pretended to be real and not simply a reflection. In stanza 3, his innocent perspective enabled him to imagine that there exists “another Heaven” of people “freely moving to and fro,” and to see “Eyes, hands, and feet they had like mine.” As a child, this intriguing “world” fascinated him so much so that he desired to “play” within it, but when he attempted to communicate with the images he saw, he was frustrated because he “could not hear them talk.” Puzzled by this inability to communicate with this world, he wondered why “We other Worlds should see/Yet not admitted be”? In stanza 5, he attempted to converse with these images of “people” and “call’d to them oft, but in vain,” At this moment in the poem, the speaker begins to substitute his adult perspective for his childhood one and realizes that “tho they were so plainly seen,/A film kept off that stood between.” That perspective does not discard the metaphor of “Shadows” in “Water”; instead, it repurposes the metaphor to represent his Christian faith in the afterlife. The rest of the poem pursues this trajectory.

In stanza 6, the speaker recognizes the potential of the memory of his childhood experience and uses that perspective in his contemplation of what those “shadows” in the water intimate. He contemplates himself viewing the water as not a childhood fantasy, but as a portal to the spiritual realm. Thus, he now envisions “walking men’s reversed feet” and thereby encounters a second “world” that “Tho it did not to view exceed/A phantom, ‘tis a world indeed,/Where skies beneath us shine,/And earth by art divine/Another face presents below,/Where people’s feet against Ours go.” It is significant to note that at his point in the poem the speaker shifts verb tenses. Through stanzas 2-5.5, his recollection of his childhood puddle experience is expressed in past tense verbs. What he saw in the past has ended, just as the reflection would vanish each time the water would dry up. From here forward, the images he now sees are presented in the present tense, e.g., “‘tis a world indeed,” existing beyond the physical water. What the eyes only see as reflections and therefore a “phantom,” the speaker’s contemplative imagination, with the help of an “art divine,” perceive as spiritual interties existing, as the present tense verbs suggest, eternally.

This speaker’s realization at the end of stanza 6 initiates the vision that in stanza 7 expands further beyond the reflected world his childhood imagination played with. He imagines “the Regions of the Air,/Compassed about with Heavens fair,” the “Great Tracks of Land there” that are “Enriched with Fields and fertile Ground/ Where many numerous hosts/For other great and glorious ends/Inhabit.” The images in this stanza are not a reflection of the world above a puddle, but something far beyond the speaker’s physical world. A place where he eventually will meet his “yet unknown friends,” those he will encounter in eternity. In stanzas 8, he envisions images of the shadows in water, which earlier in the poem were mere reflections of the world above to be the souls of all those who lived and died. He sees them as “Our Second Selves these Shadow be.” Though he can no more communicate with these “shadows” than he could speak with the reflections he saw as child, he feels an inextricable bond and joy with those he envisions. The poem's final two stanzas express that joy in the rhetorical questions it asks and answers.

Stanzas 9 and 10 overflow with the joy the speaker feels as he reaches the climax of his contemplation. He looks up to the sky and asks his “yet unknown Friends” cosmic questions about the universe: “What secret borders” demarcate the skies, and “are lofty Heavens hurl’d/’bout your inferior World?” He wonders if the lives that inhabit “distant lives” are also only “representatives,” physical bodies containing souls to be released into eternity upon death. His visions then inspires him in the final stanza to anticipate the heavenly bliss that awaits him upon his own death:

Of all the Play-mates which I knew
That here I do the Image view
In other Selves, what can it mean?
But that below the purling Stream
   Some unknown Joys there be
   Laid up in store for me;
To which I shall, when that thin Skin
Is broken, be admitted in.

The speaker asks, “That here I do the Image view/ In other Selves, what can it mean?” Then he answers that the boundary between earth and heaven will be transcended, the “film…that stood between” (40) him and eternity will be “broken,” and inevitably he will “be admitted” into the kingdom of Heaven. Traherne’s obvious confidence that “unknown joys” of heavenly resurrection await him when he dies makes for a startling contrast with the doubt and anxiety that fill religious poetry of John Donne. Maybe the reader finds Traherne’s faith too easy and prefers the grueling struggles Donne puts himself through. Even so, Traherne’s poems deserve the attention the other Metaphysical poets merit.