 Viewless Wings: Poetry and Poets
While a mystical experience may be described in words, the tools of language and logic do not allow the essence of the event
to be conveyed in any meaningful way. This is why mystics often turn to poetical devices in attempting to express their
knowledge of higher realms.
The arts, however, have an ability to evoke a sense of the numinous in a seemingly effortless manner, even where the artist
is not primarily concerned with mystical ideas. To choose just three of many, Keats,
Turner and Vaughan Williams offer excellent examples of Blake's "three
Powers in Man of conversing with Paradise:" each in their different fields has much to offer the spiritual seeker,
even though none of them are "mystics" in the usual sense. Blake himself was an embodiment of all three rolled
into one.
"Poetry, Painting and Music, the three Powers in Man of conversing with Paradise."
William Blake, A Vision of the Last Judgement
Here we offer a consideration of one small part of the poetic arts - the "little sound" (perhaps a "still
small voice") of the sonnet. The poems presented are not on esoteric or metaphysical themes in general, and yet the
best of them have the power to affect the reader profoundly. Start with our introduction to the sonnet,
then experience some of the great English language examples of this compact form by selecting any of the poets below.
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