In "The Influx" we have
No soul but stone, no man but clay am I.
In "Life's Blessedness" we have
The stars but stones.
The reader will doubtless have observed that our poet was very fond of using "treasure" and a "pleasure" as rhymes. He seldom omits to bring them in in a poem of any length, and it will be observed that they are introduced in "The Resurrection." Certain defective rhymes (or no rhymes) also occur pretty frequently, as "lay," "joy," "away," "enjoy." In "The Ways of Wisdom" we have "ways" and "joys."
I think I have produced evidence enough to convince the reader of the soundness of my contention: if not, I will undertake to produce a good deal more. It is fortunate, indeed, that "A Serious and Patheticall Contemplation" should have stolen into print (for neither at the time of its publication nor subsequently does it appear to have attracted any attention), since without it we should have had no clue to the authorship of these poems.
Mr. W. T. Brooke has discovered in the British Museum a broadside with the following title, "A Congratulatory Poem on the Right Honourable Sr Orlando Bridgman, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England," which, he suggests, may possibly have been written by the author of the poems here printed. But though it is a poem of considerable merit, it has, in my opinion, no correspondence in style with Traherne's poems. A few lines from it, however, will not be altogether out of place here:
Were all your own Rolls searcht scarce should we find
That noble seat filled with so fit a mind: