This page has been validated.
a burden, and exchanged but one heaven for another.” “Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world than I when I was a child,” writes Traherne in his Centuries of Meditations.
I was a little stranger which at my entrance into the world was saluted and surrounded with innumerable joys. My knowledge was divine. I knew by intuition those things which, since my Apostasy, I collected again by the highest reason . . . I knew nothing of sickness or death or rents or exaction, either for tribute or bread. In the absence of these I was entertained like an Angel with the works of God in their splendour and glory. I saw all in the peace of Eden. . . The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped nor was ever sown. . . . 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 . . . Boys and girls, tumbling in the streets 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. . . . 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 were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, fair skins and ruddy faces. The skies were
22
