Читать книгу Centuries of Meditations - Thomas Traherne - Страница 25

No toil of the brain, no effort of will, no learning .or study, could ever have produced such a passage as the following, had there not been in the author's soul a fire of conviction which gave life and heat to his conceptions as they issued in rapid succession from the forge of thought :—

" You are as prone to love as the sun is to shine ; it being the most natural and delightful employment of the soul of Man : without which you are dark and miserable. Consider therefore the extent of Love, its vigour and excellency. For certainly he that delights not in Love makes vain the universe, and is of necessity to himself the greatest burden. The whole world ministers to you as the theatre of your Love. It sus-bins you and all objects that you may continue to love them. Without which it were better for you to have no being. Life without objects is sensible emptiness, and that is a greater misery than death or nothing. Objects without Love are the delusion of life. The Objects of Love are its greatest treasures : and without Love it is impossible they should be treasures. For the objects which we love are the pleasing objects, and delightful things. And whatsoever is not pleasing and delightful to you can be no treasure, nay, it is distasteful and worse, since we had rather it should have no being."

Is there any passage in prose or verse in which the praise of love is chanted more eloquently or more convincingly than it is chanted here ? Did even Shelley in his " Epipsychidion " eulogise it with more power of

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