Poem of the Day: ‘The Rapture’

In her introduction to “Thomas Traherne: Poetry and Prose,” the literary scholar Denise Inge (1963–2014) writes of her first undergraduate encounter with Traherne’s poems: “I came convinced of my natural depravity, born a sinner in a world full of sin, and found in him glimpses of glory. . . . What I found in Traherne was grace.” That anyone would encounter Thomas Traherne (1636/7–1674) at all, especially in an anthology designed for college students, seems itself an occasion of grace at its chanciest.What we know of Traherne the man is a matter of sketchy detail. His birth and baptism appear in no church records. He seems to have been the son of a Hereford shoemaker, or possibly an innkeeper, born into a family that, as Denise Inge suggests, might well have belonged to the 17th century’s emergent middle class. His education, of which records do exist, took place at Hereford Cathedral School and Brasenose College, Oxford, and culminated in his receiving Holy Orders. From 1667 he served as private chaplain to Sir Orlando Bridgman, Baronet and Keeper of the Great Seal to Charles II. It was in Sir Orlando’s house that he died, in the autumn of 1674, leaving behind a body of work, bequeathed in a hasty will to his brother Philip, which would remain unread for the next two hundred years. In the winter of 1897, one William T. Brooke of London rescued Traherne’s manuscripts from a bookstall’s trash barrow, mistaking them initially for lost works of Traherne’s contemporary Henry Vaughan (1621–1695), whose poem on “Christ’s Nativity” Sun readers will recall from last December. So Traherne’s own poems came at last to light. Traherne remains a minor poet. Yet in today’s Poem of the Day, a reader may discern what it is in him that would cause Denise Inge’s young and hungry soul to leap, like the unborn John the Baptist, with the joy of recognition. In loose stanzas of dimeter lines swelling to trimeter, and in fluctuating patterns of rhyme, the poem seems to leap with that same joy. Its speaker rejoices in the recognition that the divine presence which indwells all creation also indwells himself. His existence is not a smut in the eye of God, but an incident of grace and a cause for exultation. The Raptureby Thomas TraherneSweet infancy!O Heavenly Fire! O Sacred Light!How fair and Bright!How Great am IWhom the whole World doth magnify!O heavenly Joy!O Great and Sacred BlessednessWhich I possess!So great a JoyWho did into my Arms convey?From God aboveBeing sent, the Gift doth me enflameTo praise his Name;The Stars do move,The Sun doth shine, to shew his Love.O how DivineAm I! To all this Sacred Wealth,This Life and Health,Who rais’d? Who mineDid make the same? What hand divine?___________________________________________With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.

Poem of the Day: ‘The Rapture’

More from the New York Sun

Israel and Lebanon Coordinate Aid Convoy to Christian Villages in Combat Zone

Emerging Claim That Targeting Civilian Infrastructure Is a War Crime Proves a Bridge Too Far

Stanford Calls Bluff on Students Using Jain Faith To Dodge Meal Plan

More from the New York Sun

Israel and Lebanon Coordinate Aid Convoy to Christian Villages in Combat Zone

Emerging Claim That Targeting Civilian Infrastructure Is a War Crime Proves a Bridge Too Far

Stanford Calls Bluff on Students Using Jain Faith To Dodge Meal Plan

South Florida GOP Congresswoman’s Immigration Reform Bill Sparks Backlash From Colleagues, Conservative Commentariat

Middle-Class Americans Prove the Biggest Winners From Trump’s Tax Cuts in the Big Beautiful Bill

In a Funeral for Economic Liberty, the Casket Cartel Seeks To Bury the Competition

The Double Tragedy of the Jewish Bund

Borrowing a Page From El Salvador’s Bukele, Ecuadoran President Welcomes American Troops To Assist With His Drug Gang Crackdown