Centuries of Meditations

Name: Centuries of Meditations
Author: Thomas Traherne

Annotated Edition · With an Introduction, Notes and an Outline.

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Centuries of MeditationsThe Third Century · Meditation III.3

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English Edition · Branch 217 of 454

The Third Century · Meditation III.3

Book Mode

Centuries of Meditations

p. 217

3

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 Cherubims! And young men glittering and sparkling Angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street, and playing, were moving jewels. I knew not that they were born or should die; But all things abided eternally as they were in their proper places. Eternity was manifest in the Light of the Day, and something infinite behind everything appeared which talked with my expectation and moved my desire. The city seemed to stand in Eden, or to be built in Heaven. The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their clothes and gold and silver was 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. I knew no churlish proprieties, nor bounds, nor divisions: but all proprieties and divisions were mine: all treasures and the possessors of them. So that with much ado I was corrupted, and made to learn the dirty devices of this world. Which now I unlearn, and become, as it were, a little child again that I may enter into the Kingdom of God.

170.Orient is shining, lustrous, like the finest pearls and the rising sun (see the note at I.90). The corn is immortal because the child sees it outside time, never sown and never reaped, as if it had stood, like God in Psalm 90:2, “from everlasting to everlasting”. The dust of the street as precious as gold repeats the memory told at I.25 (see the note there).

171.Traherne was born within the walls of Hereford, a city with six gates, all pulled down between 1782 and 1799. The gates beyond which the world seemed to end, and the trees first seen through one of them, are very probably Hereford’s, and the temple a few lines on is most naturally the cathedral or the family’s parish church of All Saints. The war that reached the city in his childhood (see the note at I.4) has no place in the vision.

172.Henry Vaughan, an older contemporary from the same Welsh border, opens The World (in Silex Scintillans, 1650) with “I saw Eternity the other night”, likening it to a great ring of pure and endless light. The likeness is a parallel, not a borrowing. On something infinite behind everything, compare II.81, where infinity is “the first thing which is naturally known”.

173.Property, things owned as one’s own and fenced from others (see the note at I.33 and Key Words, proprieties). Churlish is grudging, niggardly, as Nabal the churl was (1 Samuel 25:3); the bounds and divisions are the hedges, marks and boundaries of private land.

About This Reading Edition

Thomas Traherne’s Centuries explore felicity, childhood vision, love, and the soul’s capacity to enjoy the world. This annotated English edition presents all 410 meditations across five Centuries, with an introduction, explanatory notes, an outline, and textual apparatus.

Historical Text

The Centuries survive in Traherne’s manuscript and were first published by Bertram Dobell in London in 1908. The supplied edition follows the corrected Dobell text, with manuscript readings documented in its Note on the Text and Textual Notes. The four complete Centuries contain one hundred meditations each; the unfinished Fifth contains ten.

About This Edition

Diotimos Editions prepared the introduction, explanatory notes, glossary, reading guide, outline, and textual apparatus for this English original. Century and meditation numbers preserve the work’s structure, while verse line breaks, italics, and struck-through manuscript cancellations remain visible. Notes accompany their passages in the reader and Book Mode.

Rights

Thomas Traherne’s historical text and Bertram Dobell’s 1908 printing are in the public domain. The introduction, notes, and apparatus are © 2026 Diotimos Editions. Historical printing and transcription links identify the edition’s copy-text; manuscript corrections and unresolved readings are documented in the supplied editorial apparatus.