Traherne, Thomas

(1637-1674)

   Born in Herefordshire, near the Welsh border, the son of a shoemaker, he graduated B.A. from Brasenose College, Oxford (1656), M.A. 1661, and B.D. 1669, which was awarded on his prose work, Roman Forgeries (published in 1673). He was ordained in 1660 and was priest at Credenhill, Herefordshire, until he died at Teddington, Middlesex. He was buried under the reading-desk in the church. The chance discovery in 1896 in a London street bookstall of the manuscripts of Traherne's Poetical Works (published 1903) and his prose work Centuries of Meditations (published 1908) created a literary sensation. The first collection of Traherne's poetry to be published was a book of paraphrases and imitations of the Psalms (1699) now known under the title Thanksgivings. In his will he left five houses in Herefordshire for the poor of the All Saints Parish Church. Some of his poems: "Christian Ethics," "Hosanna," "In Salem Dwelt a Glorious King," "On ChristmasDay," "On Leaping over the Moon," "The Circulation," "The Resurrection," "The Third Century."

   Sources: A Sacrifice of Praise: An Anthology of Christian Poetry in English from Caedmon to the Mid-Twentieth Century. James H. Trott, ed. Cumberland House Publishing, 1999. Chapters into Verse. Vol. I: Genesis to Malachi. Robert Atwan, and Laurance Wieder, ed. Oxford University Press. 1993. Chapters into Verse. Vol. II: Gospels to Revelation. Robert Atwan, and Laurance Wieder, ED. Oxford University Press, 1993. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Poetry and Poetic Theory. Thomas J. Collins and Vivienne Rundle, eds. Broadview, 1999. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne. Bertram Dobell, ed. Self-published, 1906. Untune the Sky: Poems of Music and Dance. Helen Plotz, ed. Thomas Y. Crowell, 1957.