22 Dec 2010 01:56:26
This week's poem, "Shadows in the Water," is by one of the lesser-known metaphysicals, Thomas Traherne. Belonging to the distinguished company of poets who publish none of their verse, Traherne's might have been forgotten altogether but for the accidental discovery, in the late 19th century, of a collection on sale for a few pence at a London bookstall. Luckily, the poems' buyer was the clergyman and literary scholar Alexander Grosart: less luckily, he attributed their authorship to Henry Vaughan. You can read about the poems' further adventures here.
An Anglican minister and theologian with an interest in science, Traherne saw no conflict between his faith and the possibility of life elsewhere in the cosmos. "What if beyond the heavens there were infinite numbers of worlds at vast unspeakable distances? and all those worlds full of glorious kingdoms?" he wrote in The Kingdom of God. "Would this abolish Heaven? Verily, in my Conceit, it enriches it." Such a generous theology informs "Shadows in the Water".
In the first stanza, Traherne writes an apologia for the "sweet mistake" on which the poem elaborates: a mistake which, of course, is a conceit, deliberately plotted. No child old enough to play in puddles would believe the reflections to be real people, or certainly not for long. The tone is didactic but gentle. Traherne clearly has the patience, tact and imagination of a natural educator. He delights in shaping and extending the fantasy, and furthering the paradox by placing his shadow-world in a "chink" of water, a mere puddle "which a dry ox or horse might drink." This world is twice described as spacious; other positive attributes are brightness and the freedom of movement possible there.
An Anglican minister and theologian with an interest in science, Traherne saw no conflict between his faith and the possibility of life elsewhere in the cosmos. "What if beyond the heavens there were infinite numbers of worlds at vast unspeakable distances? and all those worlds full of glorious kingdoms?" he wrote in The Kingdom of God. "Would this abolish Heaven? Verily, in my Conceit, it enriches it." Such a generous theology informs "Shadows in the Water".
In the first stanza, Traherne writes an apologia for the "sweet mistake" on which the poem elaborates: a mistake which, of course, is a conceit, deliberately plotted. No child old enough to play in puddles would believe the reflections to be real people, or certainly not for long. The tone is didactic but gentle. Traherne clearly has the patience, tact and imagination of a natural educator. He delights in shaping and extending the fantasy, and furthering the paradox by placing his shadow-world in a "chink" of water, a mere puddle "which a dry ox or horse might drink." This world is twice described as spacious; other positive attributes are brightness and the freedom of movement possible there.
