Thomas Traherne (1636 or 1637 - 1674)
Thomas Traherne, MA was an English poet and religious writer. He was born in Hereford, son of a shoemaker. He entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1652, achieving an MA in arts and divinity nine years later. After receiving his degree in 1656 he took holy orders and worked for ten years as a parish priest in Credenhill, near Hereford, before becoming the private chaplain to Sir Orlando Bridgeman, the Lord Keeper of the Seals of Charles II, and minister at Teddington in 1667. He died at Bridgeman's house at Teddington on or about the 27th of September 1674.
In 1896 a manuscript of his poetry and prose was discovered in a London bookstall and subsequently was published as
Poems and
Centuries of Meditations.
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Traherne
In the late 1960s Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band wrote a song called 'Douglas Traherne Harding'. The song was about headlessness - Mike Heron had recently met Douglas and seen who he really was. (The song starts with the words, 'When I was born I had no head...') Mike had been reading Traherne around that time and saw the similarity between headlessness and Traherne's view. (Douglas had already found Traherne.) So Mike called the song after both Douglas and Traherne. The song includes some well-known lines from Traherne: '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..."
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