Though not as well known as John Donne or George Herbert, Thomas Traherne was one of the seventeenth centurys most searching, inventive poets and theologians.

Traherne was among about twelve Anglican lyricists dubbed by the rather prosaic Samuel Johnson as the Metaphysical Poets. Johnson meant this to imply that their poetry was pretentious and obscure. What he missed was not only their erudition but their subtlety and their profound awareness of the depths of Divine Mystery through which they tried to articulate the Christian Faith in a world which was changing from the sure faith of the Middle Ages to the bewildering maze of conflicting opinion which was the Modern.