aged seem! Immortal Cherubims! And young men glittering and
sparkling Angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and
beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street, 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.[32]

It is necessary to quote at some length, because it is the way in which
Traherne expresses his experiences or reflections which is the moving
and original thing about him. This last passage seems to anticipate
something of the magic of Keats in the _Ode to a Nightingale_ or the
_Grecian Urn_, the sense of continuity, and of eternity expressed in
time. Traherne's account of the gradual dimming of this early radiance,
and his enforced change of values is equally unusual. Only with great
difficulty did his elders persuade him "that the tinselled ware upon a
hobby-horse was a fine thing" and that a purse of gold was of any value,
but by degrees when he found that all men prized things he did not dream
of, and never mentioned those he cared for, then his "thoughts were
blotted out; and at last all the celestial great and stable treasures,
to which I was born, as wholly forgotten, if as they had never been."

But he remembered enough of those early glories to realise that if he
would regain happiness, he must "become, as it were, a little child
again," get free of "the burden and cumber of devised wants," and
recapture the value and the glory of the common things of life.

He was so resolutely bent on this that when he had left college and come
into the country and was free, he lived upon £10 a year, fed on bread
and water, and, like George Fox, wore a leather suit. Thus released from
all worldly cares, he says, through God's blessing, "I live a free and