The Salutation (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Thomas Traherne
- First Published: 1903
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Creation myth, Nature, God, Spiritual life or spirituality, Speech, Life, biological, Senses or sensation, Universe, Human anatomy, Face or faces, Eye
The Poem
In the contemplative lyric “The Salutation,” Thomas Traherne celebrates the wonder of life through the eyes of a first-person speaker who has only recently become aware of life’s gifts. The lyric consists of seven regular six-line stanzas, forty-two lines total. What begins as a celebration of existence becomes by the end a religious poem in praise of the Creator.
In the first stanza, the speaker addresses parts of his physical body—limbs, eyes, hands, and cheeks—to inquire why they were originally hidden from him. Where, he asks rhetorically, was his...
[The entire page is 1512 words long]
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