In some sense we may almost consider the Ecstatic Doctor, SAN JUAN DE LA CRUZ (1542-91), as one of Santa Teresa's disciples. He changed his worldly name of Juan de Yepes y Álvarez for that of Juan de la Cruz on joining the Carmelite order in 1563. Shortly afterwards he made the acquaintance of Santa Teresa, and, fired by her enthusiasm, he undertook to carry out in monasteries the reforms which she introduced in convents. In his _Obras espirituales_ (1618) mysticism finds its highest expression. There are moments when his prose style is of extreme clearness and force, but in many cases he soars to heights where the sense reels in the attempt to follow him. St. John of the Cross holds, with the mystics of all time, with Plotinus and Böhme and Swedenborg, that "by contemplation man may become incorporated with the Deity." This is a hard saying for some of us, not least to the present writer, and it were idle, in the circumstances, to attempt criticism of what for most men must remain a mystery. Yet in his verse one seizes the sense more easily; and his high, amorous music has an individual melody of spiritual ravishment, of daring abandonment, which is not all lost in Mr. David Lewis' unrhymed version of the _Noche oscura del Alma_ (Dark Night of the Soul):— "_In an obscure night, With anxious love inflamed, O happy lot! Forth unobserved I went, My house being now at rest...._ _In that happy night, In secret, seen of none, Seeing nought but myself, Without other light or guide Save that which in my heart was burning._ _That light guided me More surely than the noonday sun To the place where he was waiting for me Whom I knew well, And none but he appeared._ _O guiding night! O night more lovely than the dawn! O night that hast united The lover with his beloved And charged her with her love._ _On my flowery bosom, Kept whole for him alone, He reposed and slept: I kept him, and the waving Of the cedars fanned him._ _Then his hair floated in the breeze That blew from the turret; He struck me on the neck 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._"