From the book
Centuries of Meditations
Thomas Traherne · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordA garden is a cultivated space combining useful growth with beauty and pleasure.
- In TraherneTraherne asks the reader to imagine sun extinguished and sea dried up.
- In this editionThe garden in this passage is ordinary and plural.
- A place to beginPleasant gardens form part of the imagined loss that reveals the value of sun and sea.
Meaning
A garden is a cultivated space combining useful growth with beauty and pleasure. The ordinary plural appears within an account of the conditions that sustain earthly life.
Use in the book
Traherne asks the reader to imagine sun extinguished and sea dried up. Pleasant gardens disappear with fruits, flowers, food, warmth, and prospects. Their appeal therefore becomes evidence of a larger dependence usually hidden by familiarity. The garden is not isolated from nature’s processes; its cultivated order belongs within the services of light and water. Remembering this dependence should turn habitual possession into gratitude.
Places to read
- I.46Pleasant gardens form part of the imagined loss that reveals the value of sun and sea.
In this edition
The garden in this passage is ordinary and plural. Do not automatically identify it with Eden or treat every cultivated space as an explicit allegory of the soul.
Source note
Primary text: I.46.