Charles Rouse's Reviews > Centuries of Meditations

It's just absurd that classics like this go out of print. Grr. I have the Cosimo edition from 2007, maybe you can look on ABE Books, a book lovers internet source.
Heavenly. Traherne is heavenly. You don't have to be a Christian or to believe in God to appreciate Traherne, but Traherne was ordained in the Church of England. He evidently believed that God loved so he gave us a beautiful world full of useful and wonderful things. He also believed that if we don't enjoy the life that God gave us and the world that he gave us, that we are just being king of ungrateful.
His writing is wonderful, set in little comments, meant as daily meditations. There are three hundred meditations, or three centuries of daily thought, thus the title.

"You are as prone to love, as the sun is to shine;"

"For certainly he that delights not in Love makes vain the universe,"

"Few will believe the soul to be infinite: yet Infinite is the first thing which is naturally known."

It's English prose from the sixteenth century. If you can read Shakespeare in high school, this is easier. And it's well worth learning. Read one thought per day, three hundred will take about a year, considering that you'll forget some days, and go to church on Sundays.
Read the history of this book- it was not found and published till the first of the Twentieth Century- fascinating story.

A classic of the spirit and waiting to be discovered in each generation.