With his gentle hand,
And all sensation left me.
I continued in oblivion lost,
My head was resting on my love;
I fainted at last abandoned,
And, amid the lilies forgotten,
Threw all my cares away."
St. John of the Cross has absorbed the mystic essence of the Song of Solomon, and he introduces infinite new harmonies in his re-setting of the ancient melody. The worst that criticism can allege against him is that he dwells on the very frontier line of sense, in a twilight where music takes the place of meaning, and words are but vague symbols of inexpressible thoughts, intolerable raptures, too subtly sensuous for transcription. The Unknown Eros, a volume of odes, mainly mystical and Catholic, by Coventry Patmore, which has had so considerable an influence on recent English writers, was a deliberate attempt to transfer to our poetry the methods of St. John of the Cross, whose influence grows ever deeper with time.
The Dominican monk whose family name was Sarriá, but who is only known from his birthplace as Luis de Granada (1504-88), is usually accounted a mystic writer, though he is vastly less contemplative, more didactic and practical, than San Juan de la Cruz. He is best known by his Guía de Pecadores, which Regnier made the favourite reading of Macette, and which Gorgibus recommends to Célie in Sganarelle:—
"La Guide des pécheurs est encore un bon livre: