Traherne: ‘Shadows in the Water’

 The poet Thomas Traherne pictured a child looking at reflections in a puddle. Perhaps the child’s imagination ran a bit wild. That happens to adults too.

I like the poem as a gentle meditation on what we think we see.

 

         I my companions see 

         In you, another me. 

They seemèd others, but are we; 

Our second selves these shadows be. 

 

It’s a reminder that the difference we think we see between ourselves and others can be illusory.

Traherne was a 17^th century poet whose poems were lost for a couple of centuries. Lovers of literature in the 20^th century knew him. People in the 18^th and 19^th centuries did not.

Traherne also reminds me to talk about poets who should not be forgotten.

• Source: Thomas Traherne’s “Shadows in the Water” is at the Poetry Foundation’s site:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50448/shadows-in-the-water