To coincide with the Davenant Press’s publication of The Shining Human Creature: Christian Ethics Vol. 1 in a new modernization by Colin Chan Redemer, we are publishing a number of Traherne’s poems with brief accompanying thoughts from Colin. You can order the book here.

“Eden” is a poem which taps into the ever present Traherne-ian theme of working to view the world from the prelapsarian state. We can see that this appealed to C.S. Lewis, whose fiction, particularly the Ransom Trilogy, often shifts into that register of creational grace, as characters from a fallen world encounter an unfallen place or people. The distinction between characters who can see, and believe, that such places are possible and those who see them as mere masks or feints for some evil is the core distinction we should attend to. When Traherne says

I knew not that there was a serpent’s sting,
         Whose poison shed
      On men, did overspread
The world; nor did I dream of such a thing
      As sin, in which mankind lay dead.

he wants you to believe that this is possible. It is not just a fairy–or rather, it is a fairy tale, but one which is true. The state of edenic grace is our origin, but it is also our destination. Studying that state is like studying a map that will lead us home.

– Colin Chan Redemer, Poetry Editor

Eden

by Thomas Traherne

A learned and a happy ignorance  
         Divided me  
      From all the vanity, 
From all the sloth, care, pain, and sorrow that advance  
      The madness and the misery  
Of men. No error, no distraction I  
Saw soil the earth, or overcloud the sky.  

I knew not that there was a serpent’s sting,  
         Whose poison shed  
      On men, did overspread  
The world; nor did I dream of such a thing  
      As sin, in which mankind lay dead. 
They all were brisk and living wights to me, 
Yea, pure and full of immortality.  

Joy, pleasure, beauty, kindness, glory, love,  
         Sleep, day, life, light,  
      Peace, melody, my sight, 
My ears and heart did fill and freely move.  
      All that I saw did me delight.  
The Universe was then a world of treasure,  
To me an universal world of pleasure.  

Unwelcome penitence was then unknown,  
         Vain costly toys,  
      Swearing and roaring boys,  
Shops, markets, taverns, coaches, were unshown;  
      So all things were that drown’d my joys:  
No thorns chok’d up my path, nor hid the face  
Of bliss and beauty, nor eclips’d the place.  

Only what Adam in his first estate,  
         Did I behold;  
      Hard silver and dry gold  
As yet lay under ground; my blessed fate  
      Was more acquainted with the old  
And innocent delights which he did see  
In his original simplicity.  

Those things which first his Eden did adorn,  
         My infancy  
      Did crown. Simplicity  
Was my protection when I first was born.  
      Mine eyes those treasures first did see  
Which God first made. The first effects of love  
My first enjoyments upon earth did prove;  

And were so great, and so divine, so pure;  
         So fair and sweet,  
      So true; when I did meet  
Them here at first, they did my soul allure,  
      And drew away my infant feet  
Quite from the works of men; that I might see  
The glorious wonders of the Deity. 

*Image Credit: Unsplash