Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CONSUMMATION, by THOMAS TRAHERNE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CONSUMMATION, by                 Poet's Biography
First Line: The thoughts of men appear
Last Line: We all in their true nature find.
Subject(s): Soul


1

The thoughts of men appear
Freely to move within a sphere
Of endless reach; and run,
Tho in the soul, beyond the sun.
The ground on which they acted be
Is unobserv'd infinity.

2

Extended through the sky,
Tho here, beyond it far they fly:
Abiding in the mind
An endless liberty they find:
Throughout all spaces can extend,
Nor ever meet or know an end.

3

They, in their native sphere,
At boundless distances appear:
Eternity can measure;
Its no beginning see with pleasure.
Thus in the mind an endless space
Doth naturally display its face.

4

Wherein because we no
Object distinctly find or know;
We sundry things invent,
That may our fancy give content;
See points of space beyond the sky,
And in those points see creatures lie.

5

Spy fishes in the seas,
Conceit them swimming there with ease;
The dolphins and the whales,
Their very fins, their very scales,
As there within the briny deep
Their tails the flowing waters sweep.

6

Can see the very skies,
As if the same were in our eyes;
The sun, tho in the night,
As if it mov'd within our sight;
One space beyond another still
Discovered; think while ye will.

7

Which, tho we don't descry
(Much like by night an idle eye,
Not shaded with a lid,
But in a darksome dungeon hid),
At last shall in a glorious day
Be made its objects to display.

8

And then shall ages be
Within its wide eternity;
All kingdoms stand,
Howe'er remote, yet nigh at hand;
The skies, and what beyond them lie,
Exposed unto every eye.

9

Nor shall we then invent
Nor alter things; but with content
All in their places see,
As doth the glorious Deity;
Within the scope of whose great mind,
We all in their true nature find.





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