Featured Poem: The Salutation by Thomas Traherne

Spring has arrived and how nice it is to see a glimpse of sunshine, to notice the evenings getting a little lighter, and to see new life spring up around us as flowers grow and trees blossom. I often associate Spring with hope, it is a beautiful time of year. We are surrounded by new life and this is something that year after year, remains magical to me, it has an almost miraculous feel to it which must, I feel, never be taken for granted.
Thomas Trahene’s below poem 'The Salutation' is full of beauty and hope, it celebrates life, and what better time to read this than at the beginning of Spring?

The Salutation

These little Limbs,
These Eys and Hands which here I find,
This panting Heart wherwith my Life begins;
Where have ye been? Behind
What Curtain were ye from me hid so long!
Where was, in what Abyss, my new-made Tongue?

When silent I
So many thousand thousand Years
Beneath the Dust did in a Chaos ly,
How could I Smiles, or Tears,
Or Lips, or Hands, or Eys, or Ears perceiv?
Welcom ye Treasures which I now receiv.

I that so long
Was Nothing from Eternity,
Did little think such Joys as Ear and Tongue
To celebrat or see:
Such Sounds to hear, such Hands to feel, such Feet,
Beneath the Skies, on such a Ground to meet.

New burnisht Joys!
Which finest Gold and Pearl excell!
Such sacred Treasures are the Limbs of Boys
In which a Soul doth dwell:
Their organized Joints and azure Veins
More Wealth include than all the World contains.

From Dust I rise
And out of Nothing now awake;
These brighter Regions which salute mine Eys
A Gift from God I take:
The Earth, the Seas, the Light, the lofty Skies,
The Sun and Stars are mine; if these I prize.

A Stranger here,
Strange things doth meet, strange Glory see,
Strange Treasures lodg'd in this fair World appear,
Strange all and New to me:
But that they mine should be who Nothing was,
That Strangest is of all; yet brought to pass.

by Thomas Traherne