ed beauty
Traherne thus describes the attitude towards earth which is needful
before we can enter heaven.

You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in
your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with
the stars:.... Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as
misers do in gold, and Kings in sceptres, you never enjoy the
world.

Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your
jewels;.... till you love men so as to desire their happiness, with
a thirst equal to the zeal of your own: till you delight in God for
being good to all: you never enjoy the world.... The world is a
mirror of infinite beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of
Majesty, yet no man regards it. It is a region of Light and Peace,
did not men disquiet it. It is the Paradise of God.... It is, the
place of Angels and the Gate of Heaven.[31]

He is for ever reiterating, in company with all the mystics, that

'Tis not the object, but the light
That maketh Heaven: 'tis a purer sight.

He shares Wordsworth's rapture in the life of nature, and Browning's
interest in his fellow-men; he has Shelley's belief in the inner meaning
of love, and much of Keats's worship of beauty, and he expresses this in
an original and lyrical prose of quite peculiar and haunting beauty. He
has embodied his main ideas, with a good deal of repetition both in
prose and verse, but it is invariably the prose version, probably
written first, which is the most arresting and vigorous.

His _Meditations_ well repay careful study; they are full of wisdom and
of an imaginative philosophy, expressed in pithy and telling form, which
continually reminds the reader of Blake's _Proverbs of Hell_.

To have no principles or to live beside them, is equally miserable.
Philosophers are not those that speak but do great things.
All men see the same objects, but do not equally understand them.
Souls to souls are like apples, one being rotten rots another.

This kind of saying abounds on every page. Some of his more sustained
philosophic passages are also noteworthy; such, for instance, is his
comparison of the powers of the soul to the rays of the sun, which carry
light in them unexpressed until they meet an object (_Meditations_,
second century, No. 78). But Traherne's most interesting contribution to
the psychology of mysticism is his acco