of life where my
time would be devoured in care and labour. And God was so pleased to
accept of that desire that from that time to this I have had all
things plentifully provided for me without any care at all, my very
study of Felicity making me more to prosper than all the care in the
whole world. So that through His blessing I live a free and kingly
life, as if the world were turned again into Eden, or, much more, as
it is at this day."

Yet Traherne is no quietist: a fervent, passionate lover, rather, of
simple and holy things. He sees with the eyes of a child: the whole world
shines for him 'apparell'd in celestial light,' and that light, he is well
aware, shines out on it, through the eyes which observe it, from the
divine soul of man. The verses which I quoted above strike a note to
which he recurs again and again. Listen to the exquisite prose in which
he recounts the 'pure and virgin apprehension' of his childhood:--

"The corn was orient and immortal wheat which never should be reaped
nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to
everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as
gold; the gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees
when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and
ravished me; their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap
and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful
things. The Men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the
aged seem! Immortal Cherubim! And young men glittering and
sparkling angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and
beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street were moving jewels;
I knew not that they were born, or should die. . . . The streets were
mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their clothes and
gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, fair
skins, and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun and
moon and stars, and all the world was mine; and I the only spectator
and enjoyer of it. . . ."

All these things he enjoyed, his life through, uncursed by the itch for
'proprietorship': he was like the Magnanimous Man in his own _Christian
Ethicks_--'one that scorns the smutty way of enjoying things like a slave,
because he delights in the celestial way and the Image of God.' In this
creed o