
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Plates
- Dedication
- General Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Poems from the Dobell Folio
- Poems of Felicity
- Dedication
- The Author to the Critical Peruser
- The Publisher to the Reader
- The Salutation
- Wonder
- Eden
- Innocence
- An Infant-Ey
- The Return
- The Præparative
- The Instruction
- The Vision
- The Rapture
- News
- Felicity
- Adam's Fall
- The World
- The Apostacy (‘Blisse’, stanzas 5 & 6)
- Solitude
- Poverty
- Dissatisfaction
- The Bible
- Christendom
- On Christmas-Day
- Bells. I
- Bells. II
- Churches. I
- Churches. II
- Misapprehension
- The Improvment
- The Odour
- Admiration
- The Approach
- Nature
- Eas
- Dumness
- My Spirit
- Silence
- Right Apprehension
- Right Apprehension. II (‘The Apprehension’)
- Fulness
- Speed
- The Choice (‘The Designe’)
- The Person
- The Image
- The Estate
- The Evidence
- The Enquiry
- Shadows in the Water
- On Leaping over the Moon
- ‘To the same purpos’
- Sight
- Walking
- The Dialogue
- Dreams
- The Inference. I
- The Inference. II
- The City
- Insatiableness. I
- Insatiableness. II
- Consummation
- Hosanna
- The Review. I
- The Review. II
- The Ceremonial Law
- Poems from the Early Notebook
- Textual Emendations and Notes
- Manuscript Foliation of Poems
- Glossary
- Index of Titles and First Lines
Adam's Fall
from Poems of Felicity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Plates
- Dedication
- General Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Poems from the Dobell Folio
- Poems of Felicity
- Dedication
- The Author to the Critical Peruser
- The Publisher to the Reader
- The Salutation
- Wonder
- Eden
- Innocence
- An Infant-Ey
- The Return
- The Præparative
- The Instruction
- The Vision
- The Rapture
- News
- Felicity
- Adam's Fall
- The World
- The Apostacy (‘Blisse’, stanzas 5 & 6)
- Solitude
- Poverty
- Dissatisfaction
- The Bible
- Christendom
- On Christmas-Day
- Bells. I
- Bells. II
- Churches. I
- Churches. II
- Misapprehension
- The Improvment
- The Odour
- Admiration
- The Approach
- Nature
- Eas
- Dumness
- My Spirit
- Silence
- Right Apprehension
- Right Apprehension. II (‘The Apprehension’)
- Fulness
- Speed
- The Choice (‘The Designe’)
- The Person
- The Image
- The Estate
- The Evidence
- The Enquiry
- Shadows in the Water
- On Leaping over the Moon
- ‘To the same purpos’
- Sight
- Walking
- The Dialogue
- Dreams
- The Inference. I
- The Inference. II
- The City
- Insatiableness. I
- Insatiableness. II
- Consummation
- Hosanna
- The Review. I
- The Review. II
- The Ceremonial Law
- Poems from the Early Notebook
- Textual Emendations and Notes
- Manuscript Foliation of Poems
- Glossary
- Index of Titles and First Lines
Summary
God made Man upright at the first;
Man made himself by Sin accurst:
Sin is a Deviation from the Way
Of God: 'Tis that wherin a Man doth stray
From the first Path wherin he was to walk,
From the first Theme he was to talk.
His Talk was to be all of Prais,
Thanksgiving, Rapture, Holy-days;
For nothing els did with his State agree;
Being full of Wonder and Felicity,
He was in thankful sort to meditate
Upon the Throne in which he sate.
No Gold, nor Trade, nor Silver there,
Nor Cloaths, nor Coin, nor Houses were,
No gaudy Coaches, Feasts, or Palaces,
Nor vain Inventions newly made to pleas;
But Native Truth, and Virgin-Purity,
An uncorrupt Simplicity.
His faithful Heart, his Hands, and Eys
He lifted up unto the Skies;
The Earth he wondring kneel'd upon; the Air,
He was surrounded with; the Trees, the fair
And fruitful Fields, his needful Treasures were;
And nothing els he wanted there.
The World its self was his next Theme,
Wherof himself was made Supream:
He had an Angel's Ey to see the Price
Of evry Creature; that made Paradise:
He had a Tongue, yea more, a Cherub's Sense
To feel its Worth and Excellence.
Encompass'd with the Fruits of Lov,
He crowned was with Heven abov,
Supported with the Foot-stool of God's Throne,
A Globe more rich than Gold or precious Stone,
The fertil Ground of Pleasure and Delight,
Encircled in a Sphere of Light.
The Sense of what He did possess
Fill'd him with Joy and Thankfulness;
He was transported even here on Earth,
As if he then in Heven had his Birth:
The truth is, Heven did the Man surround,
The Earth being in the middle found.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Works of Thomas Traherne VIPoems from the 'Dobell Folio', Poems of Felicity, The Ceremonial Law, Poems from the 'Early Notebook', pp. 107 - 108Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014