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


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SIGHT, by                 Poet's Biography
First Line: Mine infant-eye
Last Line: So that no light in heaven more clearly shines.
Subject(s): Soul; Vision


1

Mine infant-eye,
Above the sky
Discerning endless space,
Did make me see
Two sights in me;
Three eyes adorn'd my face:
Two luminaries in my flesh
Did me refresh;
But one did lurk within,
Beneath my skin.
That was of greater worth than both the other;
For those were twins; but this had ne'er a brother.

2

Those eyes of sense
That did dispense
Their beams to natural things,
I quickly found
Of narrow bound
To know but earthly springs.
But that which through the heavens went
Was excellent,
And endless; for the ball
Was spiritual:
A visive eye things visible doth see;
But with th' invisible, invisibles agree.

3

One world was not
(Be't ne'er forgot)
Even then enough for me:
My better sight
Was infinite,
New regions I must see.
In distant coasts new glories I
Did long to spy:
What this world did present
Could not content;
But, while I look'd on outward beauties here,
Most earnestly expected others there.

4

I know not well
What did me tell
Of endless space; but I
Did in my mind
Some such thing find
To be beyond the sky
That had no bound, as certainly
As I can see
That I have foot or hand
To feel or stand:
Which I discerned by another sight
Than that which grac'd my body much more bright.

5

I own it was
A looking-glass
Of signal worth; wherein,
More than mine eyes
Could see or prize,
Such things as virtues win,
Life, joy, love, peace, appear'd: a light
Which to my sight
Did objects represent
So excellent;
That I no more without the same can see
Than beasts that have no true felicity.

6

This eye alone
(That peer hath none)
Is such, that it can pry
Into the end
To which things tend,
And all the depths descry
That God and nature do include.
By this are view'd
The very ground and cause
Of sacred laws,
All ages too, thoughts, counsels, and designs;
So that no light in Heaven more clearly shines.





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