Thomas Traherne

A Universe-bending proposition from Thomas Traherne

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black fuschia.JPG
Climbing black fuschia in the rain, back garden, 7 August

I am continuing to read the Thomas Traherne poem ‘Shadows in the Water’ : search ‘Traherne’ and you’ll find the posts. Here’s the poem – always worth re-reading aloud to get into the flow;

I’m adding numbers to the stanzas, for easy of reference.

Shadows in the water

1

In unexperienced infancy
Many a sweet mistake doth lie:
Mistake though false, intending true;
A seeming somewhat more than view;
That doth instruct the mind
In things that lie behind,
And many secrets to us show
Which afterwards we come to know.

 

2

Thus did I by the water’s brink
Another world beneath me think;
And while the lofty spacious skies
Reversèd there, abused mine eyes,
I fancied other feet
Came mine to touch or meet;
As by some puddle I did play
Another world within it lay.

3

Beneath the water people drowned,
Yet with another heaven crowned,
In spacious regions seemed to go
As freely moving to and fro:
In bright and open space
I saw their very face;
Eyes, hands, and feet they had like mine;
Another sun did with them shine.

4

’Twas strange that people there should walk,
And yet I could not hear them talk;
That through a little watery chink,
Which one dry ox or horse might drink,
We other worlds should see,
Yet not admitted be;
And other confines there behold
Of light and darkness, heat and cold.

5

I called them oft, but called in vain;
No speeches we could entertain:
Yet did I there expect to find
Some other world, to please my mind.
I plainly saw by these
A new antipodes,
Whom, though they were so plainly seen,
A film kept off that stood between.

6

By walking men’s reversèd feet
I chanced another world to meet;
Though it did not to view exceed
A phantom, ’tis a world indeed,
Where skies beneath us shine,
And earth by art divine
Another face presents below,
Where people’s feet against ours go.

7

Within the regions of the air,
Compassed about with heavens fair,
Great tracts of land there may be found
Enriched with fields and fertile ground;
Where many numerous hosts
In those far distant coasts,
For other great and glorious ends
Inhabit, my yet unknown friends.

8

O ye that stand upon the brink,
Whom I so near me through the chink
With wonder see: what faces there,
Whose feet, whose bodies, do ye wear?
I my companions see
In you, another me.
They seemèd others, but are we;
Our second selves these shadows be.

9

Look how far off those lower skies
Extend themselves! scarce with mine eyes
I can them reach. O ye my friends,
What secret borders on those ends?
Are lofty heavens hurled
’Bout your inferior world?
Are yet the representatives
Of other peoples’ distant lives?

10

Of all the playmates which I knew
That here I do the image view
In other selves, what can it mean?
But that below the purling stream
Some unknown joys there be
Laid up in store for me;
To which I shall, when that thin skin
Is broken, be admitted in.

Yesterday I’d got as far as stanza 8, and that’s where I’m picking up today:

O ye that stand upon the brink,
Whom I so near me through the chink
With wonder see: what faces there,
Whose feet, whose bodies, do ye wear?
I my companions see
In you, another me.
They seemèd others, but are we;
Our second selves these shadows be.

Here Traherne looks more closely –  ‘through the chink’ –  at the people in the other world of the puddle/window. These are people who ‘stand upon the brink’,  at the very edge of our world. Traherne asks about particularities – what faces do these people have? And then the surprise realisation:

I my companions see
In you, another me.
They seemèd others, but are we;
Our second selves these shadows be.

There’s a strong slide of meaning, possible meaning slipping into possible meaning, in the syntax of these lines – who is seeing what, where? The slippage is compounded by the rhymes: I, my, see, me, we.

I my companions see
In you, another me.

I just don’t know who ‘my companions’ are here – the people under the water?  Or the people alongside me in this world? Yes, it’s that latter: it means  ‘I and my companions see’. The syntax (the ways the words, punctuation, lines are arranged)  is so clever here: the more you look the more you can’t tell what you are seeing, as if the puddle has ripples in it which break up the  reflection into lots of parts, yet they are all still essentially ‘I’, ‘my companions’, ‘you’, ‘me’.

Finally we get to a resting place where the water, the vision, clams and we see clearly:

Our second selves these shadows be.

And now, in stanza 9, having achieved a moment of calm, Traherne flings a new, dizzying question into the pool:

Look how far off those lower skies
Extend themselves! scarce with mine eyes
I can them reach. O ye my friends,
What secret borders on those ends?
Are lofty heavens hurled
’Bout your inferior world?
Are yet the representatives
Of other peoples’ distant lives?

Now Traherne unleashes a stream of questions which can’t be answered: it’s as if the walls of the universe have fallen away. How far does this go? What does that unendingness mean? ‘What secret borders on those ends?’  When Traherne asks ‘Are lofty heavens hurled/ ’bout your inferior world’  it is as if he in free-fall, not knowing which way is up. Is there an ‘up’ in this place we look down into? If  there are reflections in that other world, what do they reflect? Are they ‘the representatives/ Of other peoples’ distant lives?’

I’m remembering something Doris Lessing wrote in her ‘Remarks’ at the beginning of The Sirian Experiments.

It has been said that everything man is capable of imagining has its counterpart somewhere else, in a different level of reality.

Traherne loves to inhabit this place between fixed points – the place where those different levels of reality meet, or touch, and  he is not all scared, but childlike, full of wonder at the  far-reachingness of  his own possible thought, or experience.

Of all the playmates which I knew
That here I do the image view
In other selves, what can it mean?
But that below the purling stream
Some unknown joys there be
Laid up in store for me;
To which I shall, when that thin skin
Is broken, be admitted in.

He puts the question, ‘what can it mean?’ squarely and without fear. What can it mean that  ‘I do the image view, In other selves’? – It means ‘unknown joys’ await him.

The idea of the ‘thin skin’ between this world and another pleases him – he wants to be ‘admitted in.’ You get the feeling that is what he has wanted all along – to dive in, to go there…there is a fascination with the world reflected in the puddle, and with the thoughts that then grow from that experience

There’s nothing in the poem about  heaven, Christianity, any sort of expounding of doctrine, though Traherne was a priest.  If there was only this poem in existence Traherne would seem to me a true Romantic –  though he lived way before ‘Romanticism’ emerged as a movement, and  was unknown to Wordsworth and the other Romantic poets, because his work was unknown and unpublished until into the twentieth century.

Why do I say Romantic? Because he apprehends the world through his feelings and tries to think from there. Because he has a naive, childlike belief in those first feelings, which I’m glad to celebrate. Because ‘God’ doesn’t seem to come with human thinking attached, but rather as a direct and ordinary experience – the limilessness of God in a puddle.

And that’s what this poem is, isn’t it?  A small thing happens – child looks in puddle, see other  people there, other sky. From that experience comes this echoing hall of mirrors universe/time/space bending proposition which is about the thin barriers between states of being,  between life and death, this earth and heaven, whatever that is – this is what Wordsworth, a hundred years or so  later will call an of immortality’.

Read about Thomas Traherne here.

 

 

See the possibilities? Thomas Traherne’s ‘Shadows in the Water’

drjanedavis1 Comment
japanese anenomes.JPG
Japanese anenomes, white hydraganea and couchgrass, 6 August

I’ve been reading Thomas Traherne’s poem ‘Shadows in the Water’ for a few days: search ‘Traherne’ and you’ll find the posts. Here’s the poem – always worth re-reading aloud to get into the flow;

I’m adding numbers to the stanzas, for easy of reference.

Shadows in the water

1

In unexperienced infancy
Many a sweet mistake doth lie:
Mistake though false, intending true;
A seeming somewhat more than view;
That doth instruct the mind
In things that lie behind,
And many secrets to us show
Which afterwards we come to know.

 

2

Thus did I by the water’s brink
Another world beneath me think;
And while the lofty spacious skies
Reversèd there, abused mine eyes,
I fancied other feet
Came mine to touch or meet;
As by some puddle I did play
Another world within it lay.

3

Beneath the water people drowned,
Yet with another heaven crowned,
In spacious regions seemed to go
As freely moving to and fro:
In bright and open space
I saw their very face;
Eyes, hands, and feet they had like mine;
Another sun did with them shine.

4

’Twas strange that people there should walk,
And yet I could not hear them talk;
That through a little watery chink,
Which one dry ox or horse might drink,
We other worlds should see,
Yet not admitted be;
And other confines there behold
Of light and darkness, heat and cold.

5

I called them oft, but called in vain;
No speeches we could entertain:
Yet did I there expect to find
Some other world, to please my mind.
I plainly saw by these
A new antipodes,
Whom, though they were so plainly seen,
A film kept off that stood between.

6

By walking men’s reversèd feet
I chanced another world to meet;
Though it did not to view exceed
A phantom, ’tis a world indeed,
Where skies beneath us shine,
And earth by art divine
Another face presents below,
Where people’s feet against ours go.

7

Within the regions of the air,
Compassed about with heavens fair,
Great tracts of land there may be found
Enriched with fields and fertile ground;
Where many numerous hosts
In those far distant coasts,
For other great and glorious ends
Inhabit, my yet unknown friends.

8

O ye that stand upon the brink,
Whom I so near me through the chink
With wonder see: what faces there,
Whose feet, whose bodies, do ye wear?
I my companions see
In you, another me.
They seemèd others, but are we;
Our second selves these shadows be.

9

Look how far off those lower skies
Extend themselves! scarce with mine eyes
I can them reach. O ye my friends,
What secret borders on those ends?
Are lofty heavens hurled
’Bout your inferior world?
Are yet the representatives
Of other peoples’ distant lives?

10

Of all the playmates which I knew
That here I do the image view
In other selves, what can it mean?
But that below the purling stream
Some unknown joys there be
Laid up in store for me;
To which I shall, when that thin skin
Is broken, be admitted in.

and had got to  this point in stanza 4:

Strange….

…We other worlds should see,
Yet not admitted be;
And other confines there behold
Of light and darkness, heat and cold.

As I reread this morning I was arrested by the opening of stanza 3 which I’d passed over rather quickly the first time round;

Beneath the water people drowned,
Yet with another heaven crowned,
In spacious regions seemed to go

It was ‘drowned’ that struck me – partly because yesterday I’d been thinking of the oddness of this world being vulnerable to a thirsty ox, and thinking of  in almost sci fi way about ways to move between worlds or modes. That thoughts developed after I’d read ‘drowned’ yesterday and I didn’t go back to  this word – but now with the odd thought firmly established in my mind, as I reread, ‘drowned’  is a clue.

A clue to what? To the strange point of  view Traherne is inhabiting – where he can see two worlds, he’s in a virtual doorway. Looked at from one point of view (this world) the people  he can see are drowning. Looked at from  inside the puddle-world they are not drowning they are ‘freely moving to and fro’.

If I was reading this in a group I’d want to open up a conversation about what we all know about different worlds, different possible worlds, and whether we ever sense them.  I’d be looking for an example.  Time and chance  offer the easiest examples, perhaps. You meet an old boyfriend after twenty years in some unexpected situation, there he is, selling you a new car, working as an ambulance driver, the police detective who comes about your burglary, at a school reunion/  Possible lives – what if we had stayed together? – open up. You look at them briefly. Most likely the possible closes down.

Another example? You were injured in an accident when you went on a VSO project, you lost a hand. Wouldn’t the moment of choosing to go on that adventure keep replaying? Possible lives where you chose something else?  How close are those worlds?

Of course, these examples  are linked by choices, and Traherne’s are not – his are wild and unpredictable  glitches in the universe.  Have you ever  experienced anything like that? Sometimes landscape seems to open up other ways of seeing – for me, very big landscapes – the Lake District, the Bay of Kotor, the Pembroke Coast seem to offer intimations of  the world in a different mode – rather like  in the Coventry Patmore poem last week.

But Traherne’s vision is odder than that. That’s what  I love about Traherne. It’s all very strange for him.

So in stanza 3 Traherne sees that double vision, and in stanza 4 he comments the strangeness of his own (our own) position, ‘strange’ he says ;

We other worlds should see,
Yet not admitted be;
And other confines there behold
Of light and darkness, heat and cold

The experience seems increasingly about vision – I am just noticing all the words that are about seeing, a list which begins early on with the word ‘seeming’; which contains ‘seeing’ ; it’s Traherne’s eyes which are initially tricked by the experience (stanza 2) in stanza 3, ‘saw’, stanza 4 ‘see’, stanza 5 ‘saw’ ‘seen’, stanza 6 ‘view’, stanza 8 ‘see’ ‘see’ and ‘seemed’, stanza 9 ‘look’ ‘eyes’, stanza 10 ‘image’ ‘view’.

Here is something we can see but not enter, not touch, not talk or otherwise communicate with and yet the seeing is strong;

I called them oft, but called in vain;
No speeches we could entertain:
Yet did I there expect to find
Some other world, to please my mind.
I plainly saw by these
A new antipodes,
Whom, though they were so plainly seen,
A film kept off that stood between.

‘Antipodes’ is a great word to have here ; it means ‘having the feet opposite’ and signifies usually  in English, Australia and New Zealand – the opposite sides of the earth.  These were places people once couldn’t imagine. In flat earth days it would have been impossible that there could be another side to the planet.  butthat thinking about possibility grew outmoded – we found ‘the antipodes’ and learned  more about our planet.

What is the child who plays in this puddle learning ? (Thinking of Emerson asking what does the wave teach the fisherman).  The child is learning that things can look very different – that there are other worlds, other beings…that we can’t communicate with them in the usual ways – because

though they were so plainly seen,
A film kept off that stood between

How important is this ‘film’, this thin but apparently impermeable barrier? And is it a metaphor for something else? I’m not sure yet, so I read on into stanza 6;

By walking men’s reversèd feet
I chanced another world to meet;
Though it did not to view exceed
A phantom, ’tis a world indeed,
Where skies beneath us shine,
And earth by art divine
Another face presents below,
Where people’s feet against ours go.

This joining at the feet, this mirroring, seems very important now.  This is the place of the film and yet it is also the place of view – not a doorway, as I thought earlier, but a window which opens a view –  yes, a view of a phantom, yet ’tis a world indeed’. The repetition of the joining point, the keeping coming back to it ‘where people’s feet against ours go’.

Now I come to  stanza 7 which I’ve found  most hard to understand when I’ve been reading through;

Within the regions of the air,
Compassed about with heavens fair,
Great tracts of land there may be found
Enriched with fields and fertile ground;
Where many numerous hosts
In those far distant coasts,
For other great and glorious ends
Inhabit, my yet unknown friends.

Does Traherne look up at this point? He has been (remembering) looking down at the world in the puddle, but suddenly now he’s talking about ‘the air’, ‘heavens’. The puddle world wasn’t so much a metaphor as a clue to possibility: there may be such worlds in other  places and look up! there’s all that space up there. Given what we have just seen in the puddle, is it possible that there are worlds, lands;

Great tracts of land there may be found
Enriched with fields and fertile ground;

And beyond the land, may there be creatures, my yet unknown friends, (walking foot to foot with us?)

Where many numerous hosts
In those far distant coasts,
For other great and glorious ends
Inhabit, my yet unknown friends.

Host is often a word for angels – the heavenly host – and if they are there – we may not know what they are doing, we will not understand their ‘great and glorious ends’, just as there is no communication between the people in the reversed world of the puddle. Now we come to stanza 8 where Traherne makes his leap of thought explicit:

O ye that stand upon the brink,
Whom I so near me through the chink
With wonder see: what faces there,
Whose feet, whose bodies, do ye wear?
I my companions see
In you, another me.
They seemèd others, but are we;
Our second selves these shadows be.

 

But that’s it for today – will read  this stanza tomorrow. But look at the skies today, look up.

A Thirsty Ox Connecting Thomas Traherne to Terry Pratchett?

drjanedavis1 Comment
sweetpeas.JPG
Post-admin aromatherapy: sweetpeas and other flowers scenting my desk, 5 August

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday I started reading Shadows in the Water by Thomas Traherne – a longish poem which I’ll be reading for a  few sessions.  Need it this morning because I did a bit of admin before starting my Daily Reading Practice, something I never normally do, and it has got me into a very bad temper. Passwords, timed outs, and verifications –  hours of it. You all know how irritating that is. and it is a sunny morning and I want to get gardening.  So – deep breath. Read.

Shadows in the water

In unexperienced infancy
Many a sweet mistake doth lie:
Mistake though false, intending true;
A seeming somewhat more than view;
That doth instruct the mind
In things that lie behind,
And many secrets to us show
Which afterwards we come to know.

Thus did I by the water’s brink
Another world beneath me think;
And while the lofty spacious skies
Reversèd there, abused mine eyes,
I fancied other feet
Came mine to touch or meet;
As by some puddle I did play
Another world within it lay.

Beneath the water people drowned,
Yet with another heaven crowned,
In spacious regions seemed to go
As freely moving to and fro:
In bright and open space
I saw their very face;
Eyes, hands, and feet they had like mine;
Another sun did with them shine.

’Twas strange that people there should walk,
And yet I could not hear them talk;
That through a little watery chink,
Which one dry ox or horse might drink,
We other worlds should see,
Yet not admitted be;
And other confines there behold
Of light and darkness, heat and cold.

I called them oft, but called in vain;
No speeches we could entertain:
Yet did I there expect to find
Some other world, to please my mind.
I plainly saw by these
A new antipodes,
Whom, though they were so plainly seen,
A film kept off that stood between.

By walking men’s reversèd feet
I chanced another world to meet;
Though it did not to view exceed
A phantom, ’tis a world indeed,
Where skies beneath us shine,
And earth by art divine
Another face presents below,
Where people’s feet against ours go.

Within the regions of the air,
Compassed about with heavens fair,
Great tracts of land there may be found
Enriched with fields and fertile ground;
Where many numerous hosts
In those far distant coasts,
For other great and glorious ends
Inhabit, my yet unknown friends.

O ye that stand upon the brink,
Whom I so near me through the chink
With wonder see: what faces there,
Whose feet, whose bodies, do ye wear?
I my companions see
In you, another me.
They seemèd others, but are we;
Our second selves these shadows be.

Look how far off those lower skies
Extend themselves! scarce with mine eyes
I can them reach. O ye my friends,
What secret borders on those ends?
Are lofty heavens hurled
’Bout your inferior world?
Are yet the representatives
Of other peoples’ distant lives?

Of all the playmates which I knew
That here I do the image view
In other selves, what can it mean?
But that below the purling stream
Some unknown joys there be
Laid up in store for me;
To which I shall, when that thin skin
Is broken, be admitted in.

Yesterday I’d only got as far as stanza one, so picking up where I left off…Traherne is about to tell us about a childhood error, a mistake due to what he explains as believing a ‘seeming’ rather than seeing a true ‘view’.

Thus did I by the water’s brink
Another world beneath me think;
And while the lofty spacious skies
Reversèd there, abused mine eyes,
I fancied other feet
Came mine to touch or meet;
As by some puddle I did play
Another world within it lay.

Have you ever seen this ? In a powerfully clear puddle of water on a strongly lit day – the blue of sky reflected, the sense of another world opening up at your feet? It is the great height (or depth) of those ‘lofty, spacious’ skies that provide the ‘seeming’. The verb is ‘abused’ –  a strong word. But is there an older less dangerous meaning?  Ab + used  – used wrongly?  No used up…(from the online etymological dictionary: early 15c., “to misuse, misapply” (power, money, etc.), from Old French abuser “deceive, abuse, misuse” (14c.), from Vulgar Latin *abusare, from Latin abusus “an abusing; a using up,” )

In the first stanza, this kind of mistake is called ‘sweet’, and is seen as having a true intention behind it – ‘mistake though false, intending true’, therefore an error of no bad intent which may ‘instruct the mind’.  All this makes me think I can’t take that ‘abused’ too strongly.  The experience is what it seems – a child, playing by puddle, imagining another world. Provoked or tricked into imagining but with no bad intent.

Beneath the water people drowned,
Yet with another heaven crowned,
In spacious regions seemed to go
As freely moving to and fro:
In bright and open space
I saw their very face;
Eyes, hands, and feet they had like mine;
Another sun did with them shine.

Hard to tell whether these are totally imaginary people or reflections of real people, like Traherne himself, near the puddle. I’m going with imaginary, because he used the word ‘fancied’ – and there’s a connection between ‘fancy’ and ‘imagination’ (fantasy). But the opening line – ‘people drowned’ is  worrying – is this about a kind of margin between this word and the other. If we have our head in this word,  then those upside down in the puddle must be drowned. but if that world is the real world then they are ‘with another heaven crowned.’

I fancied other feet
Came mine to touch or meet;

I notice that we get the word ‘spacious’ again in this stanza ( ‘the lofty spacious skies’ feature in the previous). Somehow this word is key to the experience – the  largeness of the sky, and of the reflected sky, giving Traherne a sense of  vast room, which somehow makes me think about room for other things, things we haven’t yet imagined or thought.

It’s rather like that line in Paradise Lost  when Satan feels the roominess of hell and gloats as he sees Adam and Eve for the first time

Hell shall unfold,
To entertain you two, her widest Gates,
And send forth all her Kings; there will be room,
Not like these narrow limits, to receive
Your numerous offspring;

Room, space, as potential. As Thomas Traherne watches (or remembers watching) this world gets more real – the people  no longer seemed drowned, they seem close-up and very particular ;

I saw their very face;
Eyes, hands, and feet they had like mine;
Another sun did with them shine.

But there is a gap,  which Traherne calls ‘a watery chink’.  I’m thinking about doorways, margins, cross-over points. He can see these people very closely but he can’t hear them, he’s not in the same world as them:

’Twas strange that people there should walk,
And yet I could not hear them talk;
That through a little watery chink,
Which one dry ox or horse might drink,
We other worlds should see,
Yet not admitted be;
And other confines there behold
Of light and darkness, heat and cold.

Great to imagine the thirsty beast who might close this chink with the practical necessity of drinking! Suddenly every thing seems very odd,  very sci-fi, very unstable. Worlds open up at your feet,  but a  thirsty ox can close them down – it’s like something from  Terry Pratchett! And  things are stranger still, Traherne continues:

We other worlds should see,
Yet not admitted be;
And other confines there behold
Of light and darkness, heat and cold.

I’m breathing normally now and have got over my admin tensions…and what’s left of my Daily Practice time is up, because the sun may no last all morning and the gardening must begin. More of this tomorrow.

Shadows in the Water

drjanedavis2 Comments

 

fennel shivering.JPG
Fennel shivering in front garden, August 4

This morning I have used up some of my hour looking for what to read next. I’ve been reading more Coventry Patmore and then drifted over towards Wordsworth, but neither seemed to be what I wanted to  think and write about this morning.  I plan to write about some more Denise Levertov poems, but must get organised to get  permissions sorted first. I glanced through  All The Days of My Life, thinking, is there anything in there that I haven’t already read? And here, there was this poem by Thomas Traherne, whose work I love, that I don’t think I’ve ever read. It’ll take more than  one post  to read it.

I’ve glanced at the poem, I’ve scanned it. I’ve realised ‘I don’t know it.’ Now I’m going to read it slowly and try to get the lie of the land – not understanding or even trying to understand most of it, but  getting the feel of its shape and outlines, areas of  difficulty, the words or clauses or lines that seem most important.  If not writing on-screen, I’d be doing this reading with a pencil –  marking bits even when I didn’t really know why I was marking them. I’m going to use a different colour to mark  those points here – but read it yourself at The Poetry Foundation, with none of my marks, first.

Shadows in the water

In unexperienced infancy
Many a sweet mistake doth lie:
Mistake though false, intending true;
A seeming somewhat more than view;
That doth instruct the mind
In things that lie behind,
And many secrets to us show
Which afterwards we come to know.

Thus did I by the water’s brink
Another world beneath me think;
And while the lofty spacious skies
Reversèd there, abused mine eyes,
I fancied other feet
Came mine to touch or meet;
As by some puddle I did play
Another world within it lay.

Beneath the water people drowned,
Yet with another heaven crowned,
In spacious regions seemed to go
As freely moving to and fro:
In bright and open space
I saw their very face;
Eyes, hands, and feet they had like mine;
Another sun did with them shine.

’Twas strange that people there should walk,
And yet I could not hear them talk;
That through a little watery chink,
Which one dry ox or horse might drink,
We other worlds should see,
Yet not admitted be;
And other confines there behold
Of light and darkness, heat and cold.

I called them oft, but called in vain;
No speeches we could entertain:
Yet did I there expect to find
Some other world, to please my mind.
I plainly saw by these
A new antipodes,
Whom, though they were so plainly seen,
A film kept off that stood between.

By walking men’s reversèd feet
I chanced another world to meet;
Though it did not to view exceed
A phantom, ’tis a world indeed,
Where skies beneath us shine,
And earth by art divine
Another face presents below,
Where people’s feet against ours go.

Within the regions of the air,
Compassed about with heavens fair,
Great tracts of land there may be found
Enriched with fields and fertile ground;
Where many numerous hosts
In those far distant coasts,
For other great and glorious ends
Inhabit, my yet unknown friends.

O ye that stand upon the brink,
Whom I so near me through the chink
With wonder see: what faces there,
Whose feet, whose bodies, do ye wear?
I my companions see
In you, another me.
They seemèd others, but are we;
Our second selves these shadows be.

Look how far off those lower skies
Extend themselves! scarce with mine eyes
I can them reach. O ye my friends,
What secret borders on those ends?
Are lofty heavens hurled
’Bout your inferior world?
Are yet the representatives
Of other peoples’ distant lives?

Of all the playmates which I knew
That here I do the image view
In other selves, what can it mean?
But that below the purling stream
Some unknown joys there be
Laid up in store for me;
To which I shall, when that thin skin
Is broken, be admitted in.

By stanza 8, I was lost, couldn’t work out what was being said. I marked it all, and thought I’ll stop reading here, mind overload. Start again more slowly.

Did I get a  glance at the shape of the poem, a rough outline?  Yes – something about the sense of  other worlds, other modes of being perhaps,  which Traherne gained from seeing reflections in a puddle. That this leads him to think something about … hmm, but  I’ve lost it. Need to start again and get it bit by bit.  Odd feeling, because much of the poem is very simple but then you have the suddenly down a rabbit-hole feeling.

In unexperienced infancy
Many a sweet mistake doth lie:
Mistake though false, intending true;
A seeming somewhat more than view;
That doth instruct the mind
In things that lie behind,
And many secrets to us show
Which afterwards we come to know.

I felt at first, I’ll understand this better when I know more about the rest of the poem. But I’ve read through the rest of the poem and am still not very clear, so going to start making a stab at understanding it, knowing that I’ll have to come back later with more understanding… But now I read the opener… I see that may be what he is talking about – that learning process I’ve just described.

As I read this stanza again, I’m thinking of two things: (i) how babies learn and (ii) how I learn.  ‘Inexperienced infancy’ might apply to a child learning something for the first time but it also applies to me  now – with regards to  this poem, I am in ‘inexperienced infancy’, it’s all new to me. I might make a mistake – and as Owl said to Winnie the Pooh, ‘no blame can be attached’, it is a ‘sweet mistake because it comes from ‘inexperience’.

It’s a mistake but it was ‘intending true’, so the intention behind was good – was in itself true – though what you did with it wasn’t quite right. Thomas Traherne  explains this with that series of clauses – look at the punctuation – colon, semi colon, semi colon – as if one thought leads on to another and comes from or winds up inside another.

I look again at the line ‘a seeming somewhat more than view’ – not sure whether it is coming out of the line that preceded it;

Mistake though false, intending true;
A seeming somewhat more than view;

or leading to the line that follows;

A seeming somewhat more than view;
That doth instruct the mind

Now I’ve split them out like that I can it is both, it’s a transitional line – you make a mistake out of ignorance because you had a slightly false/unclear idea of  something rather than a clear view. That  ignorant, unmeant, misapprehension, ‘doth instruct the mind’. It’s not your fault! It is a fault of not knowing.

At the beginning of learning to understand something, the something – let’s say someone else’s state of mind – it is cloudy: you often can’t see it clearly because you have don’t have the mental sight lines, coordinates to  get the perspective.

Ok – that’s all about me, me thinking about how I make mistakes and the effect of not knowing… but when I look again at the stanza, and an hour into my reading of this poem, I can see that Traherne is talking about how kids misunderstand things and sometimes that  creates something beautiful. A silly example:

My mum told me that when she was a child they called the cupboard under the stairs  ‘The Glory Hole’ or The Glory for short. At the end of the Lord’s Prayer, Anglicans say or said in her day, ‘For thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory…’ Mum, in her child ignorance made the ‘sweet mistake’ as Traherne would call it, of  assuming that meant that God somehow owned ‘The Glory’ under their stairs, that it was a  His place. Lovely mistake, does no harm, is sweet. Based on a ‘seeming’ rather than on clear sight.

Thomas Traherne is now going to tell us such a story of his own. But that’s for tomorrow.