The Salutation

Thomas Traherne’s poem, “The Salutation” talks about the cycle of birth to death from the standpoint of a Christian mind. The poem begins with the speaker using imagery from the viewpoint of an unborn child. The child notices its eyes, hands, and cheeks, making it obvious that it is self-aware. This imagery is used to create the idea of life before birth. As a heavy believer in Christianity, Traherne often refers to spiritual wonders or the miracles of existing. The last two lines of his first stanza seem to be a response to Psalm 139:15. Although he is a religious follower, his lines contradict those spoken in the Psalm. In the second stanza, Traherne speaks from the viewpoint of a soul that has existed for thousands of years coming into a new body.
The third stanza, talks about how the newborn soul finds great joy in experiencing the human senses. This stanza gives the reader an image of an old soul waking up, being released back into the world free again. In the fourth stanza the writer compares the limbs of a human to gold or money, saying that nothing can compare to the value of the extremities. The fifth stanza begins with, ”From dust I rise.” This is where Traherne completes the circle and loops back to death. He writes about how the soul goes to heaven, and the sight of it is, “a gift from god.” His faith in god will grant him whatever he wants. Traherne’s faith in god while writing this piece makes it easy for the reader to tell where his inspiration is drawn from. Similar to the Bible, he uses synecdoches of children to represent all of creation and life. His constant references to the bible allow us to see the path he was raised on and help us to understand the world through his