Читать книгу Centuries of Meditations - Thomas Traherne - Страница 8

shells to the stars, all beings from the worm to man, all sounds from the voice of the little bird to the voice of the great ocean ; and who are able partially to reproduce these rhythms and cadences in the language of men. In all these imitative songs of theirs is a latent undertone, in which the whole infinite harmony of the whole lies furled; and the fine ears catch this undertone, and convey it to the soul, wherein the furled music unfurls to its primordial infinity, expanding with rapturous pulses and agitating with awful thunders this soul which has been skull-bound, so that it is dissolved and borne away beyond consciousness, and becomes as a, living wave in a shoreless ocean. If, however these their poems be read silently in books, instead of being heard chanted by the human voice, then for the eye which has vision an underlight stirs and quickens among the letters which grow translucent and throb with light ; and this mysterious splendour entering by the eyes into the soul fills it with spheric illumination, and like the mysterious music swells to infinity, consuming with quick fire all the bonds and dungeon-walls of the soul, dazing it out of consciousness and dissolving it in a shoreless ocean of light."

That this passage might very well stand for a particular description of Traherne's character as a poet can, I think, hardly be disputed. If ever man felt that the ‘universe is one mighty harmony of beauty and joy,' that man was most certainly Traherne. In all his writings (save his " Roman Forgeries ") his continual

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