From the book
Centuries of Meditations
Thomas Traherne · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordProspect means a view or the scene presented to sight, including inward or imaginative sight.
- In TraherneTraherne moves easily from landscapes to the prospect of all nations praising God.
- In this editionThe 2026 note to III.87 glosses prospect as view.
- A place to beginThe sun’s illumination entertains its recipient with prospects.
Meaning
Prospect means a view or the scene presented to sight, including inward or imaginative sight. It is not limited to the probability of some future event.
Use in the book
Traherne moves easily from landscapes to the prospect of all nations praising God. The latter exceeds fields and starry heavens in sweetness because willing persons add a responsive life to the spectacle. At the Cross a prospect becomes a position from which heaven and earth can be understood together. The word thus carries both what is seen and an implied way of seeing it. Its uses help track the book’s enlargement of vision from pleasant scenery into a world of relations, persons, and divine action.
Places to read
In this edition
The 2026 note to III.87 glosses prospect as view. Reading the nations’ praise only as a future possibility loses the meditation’s present imaginative sight.
Source note
Primary text: II.8, III.87, I.61; historical gloss: 2026 edition note to III.87.