Customer Reviews

The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The editors tell you right off, "that this anthology makes no claim to be representative even of any poet whose work is included, since the great mass of writing by which he or she is commonly known may fall without our limits, and some little known poem or poems may have seemed to answer our requirements." (the introduction)

So there is some wonderful work in this volume by many well-known poets, including selections less often anthologized. Among the poets included are Southwell, Donne, Marvell, Traherne, Blake, Wordsworth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, both Brownings, Poe, Tennyson, Emily Bronte, Walt Whitman, Francis Thompson, Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, and many more, some of whom I never heard of (but then, I avoided literature courses like the plague). Milton is, however, conspicuously absent.

For a book originally published in 1917, the volume's scope is pretty wide. There are lots of women poets. Selections are mostly Christian, but not exclusively: Sarojini Nayadu contributes "To a Buddha Seated on a Lotus," and two others. And who knows what to make of Aleister Crowley?

It's beautifully printed and bound, with a nice ribbon marker. There's a lot in this book to truly move you, when the world is too much with you.

This book contains a few gems I had not read before, so I would like to give it a higher rating. However, the literary quality of most of the last half of the book is extremely low, full of tired rhymes and cliches. Much of the "mysticism" is of the misty variety, the sort the great mystics are constantly warning against. I would like to have seen the seventeenth century better represented (only two poems by Francis Quarles!). Also, fewer poems than I expected demonstrated a definite religious commitment, Christian or otherwise. I was, however, glad for the token representations of Jewish, Islamic, Hindu & Buddhist perspectives, little as they were.

I am thrilled to know that this book is back in print. I read it back in the early 70s. It was a library copy and already out of print, so I hand-copied all the poems I could. I've missed the rest ever since. Getting this new copy is like meeting an old friend--no, more than a friend, a mentor on my spiritual path. Don't miss this: it's the real thing.

A compendium of English mystical verse that can enrich one's literary and devotional experience. I consider it a one of the basic books in my Christian library and refer to it often.

The fiery passion of mystical experience in all of its varieties is in every poem!