Centuries of Meditations - Tapa dura

You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you...Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your jewels; till you are as familiar with the ways of God in all Ages as with your walk and table: till you are intimately acquainted with that shady nothing out of which the world was made: till you love men so as to desire their happiness, with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own: till you delight in God for being good to all: you never enjoy the world... (First Century). Centuries of Meditations is so called because it consists of meditations arranged in four sections of one hundred meditations in each, with the first ten meditations of a fifth century. The meditations were evidently written for a friend, who had given him the blank notebook in which they were written.

Thomas Traherne belongs to that select group of writers which includes George Herbert and the Vaughan brothers, whose roots are in the borders of England and Wales, and who thus combine the respective essences of Anglo Saxon and Celtic spirituality. He is also within the tradition of seventeenth-century Anglican spirituality, represented by such writers as Herbert and Henry Vaughan again, and by John Donne, Lancelot Andrewes, Jeremy Taylor, Nicholas Ferrar, and the Cambridge Platonists. He is one of that great communion of saints and sages who have endeavoured to propagate the truth throughout all ages.