The first eight chapters of this book are written in singular and very beautiful verses, and across their images, on the dark background of essential love, as across the windows of a burning convent, there flicker continually bright spiritual flames, and also frozen sadnesses, not unlike those of Villon or of Verlaine. Here are some of these verses:-- “Contemplation is a science without mode, Above human reason remaining evermore; Unto our reason can it not come down, Neither above it can reason ever rise. Its enlightened freedom is a noble mirror, Wherein the eternal splendour of God doth shine. This modeless freedom hath no manner of its own, And before it all the works of reason pale; This modeless freedom is not God Himself, But it is the light by which we see Him. Those who move in this freedom unrestrained In the light of God, See vast prospects stretching out within them. This modeless freedom is more high than reason, Yet not without reason; All things beholdeth it without surprise-- Surprise is far beneath it The life of contemplation is without surprise: It sees, but knows not what is seen, Above all things is it, and neither this nor that.” Afterwards, the poet, perceiving that his verses are becoming too obscure, standing as he is on the threshold of eternal knowledge, says suddenly and very simply-- “Now must I cease from versing And speak of contemplation clearly.” From this point he makes use of a strange prose, dark as the fearful void into which he is gazing, resembling that fierce cold which reigns above all our images, with blue lights flashing over the black frosts of abstraction. And when he descends for a moment into the regions of similitudes, he touches only the most distant, the most subtle, and the most unknown; he loves, too, such things as mirrors, reflections, crystal, fountains, burning glasses, water-plants, precious stones, glowing iron, hunger, thirst, fire, fish, the stars, and everything that helps him to endow his ideas with visible forms--forms laid prostrate in the presence of love on these clear summits of the soul--and to give distinctness to those unheard-of truths which he calmly reveals. It is needless to say more, for you shall presently reach the threshold of that spiritual marriage, and from there behold the still tempest of joy, reaching as far as to the eternal heart of God. In one word, this man of all others went near to beholding thought as it will be after death, and showed a faint shadow of its rich growths of the future, in the midst of the incomprehensible effluence of the Holy Trinity. I believe that this is a work which we shall perhaps remember elsewhere and always. You shall see, too, that the most amazing outbursts of St. Teresa are hardly to be distinguished from the top of those unlighted, colourless, and airless glaciers to which we climb with him “beyond surprise and emotion, above reason and