Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse

Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse
The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse was a poetry anthology edited by Daniel Howard Sinclair Nicholson and Arthur Hugh Evelyn Lee, and published in 1917 by the Oxford University Press. The compilation contains much religious verse, mainly from English Christian traditions, and some from other religions. It also gives a representative cross-section of the esoteric interests of the first decade of the twentieth century, most notably in the presence of poems by A. E. Waite and the young Aleister Crowley. Lee, an Anglican clergyman, associated with Waite. Nicholson later published a work on mysticism and St. Francis of Assisi. They both joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Lee in 1908, and Nicholson in 1910 ; both were friends of Charles Williams. Therefore the selection touches on the side of occultism thought compatible in its time with Christian belief.

The very varied scope of the collection shows through in poems from the latter part of the nineteenth century onwards. Its eclectic nature is shown by the presence of: Alfred Gurney, a clergyman most notable for his friendship with Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti; Edward Carpenter, Fabian socialist and homosexual; Frederick William Henry Myers, academic and psychic researcher; John Addington Symonds, aesthete; Walter Leslie Wilmshurst, writer on freemasonry and Wagner; Darrell Figgis, better known as a novelist and Sinn Féin member; George Santayana, the philosopher; Fred G. Bowles who was a Tin Pan Alley lyricist.

The entire collection is available online.

Poets in The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse
Lascelles Abercrombie - William Alexander - Edwin Arnold - Matthew Arnold - Philip James Bailey - Elsa Barker - George Barlow - Clifford Bax - Henry Charles Beeching - Arthur Christopher Benson - John Stuart Blackie - Francis William Bourdillon - Fred G. Bowles - Emily Brontë - Thomas Edward Brown - Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Robert Browning - Robert Buchanan - Alice Mary Bunston - John Byrom - Bliss Carman - Edward Carpenter - Henry Bernard Carpenter - Edward Caswall - Madison Julius Cawein - Nora Chesson - G. K. Chesterton - Wilfred Rowland Childe - Amy Clarke - Ellen Mary Clerke - Mary Elizabeth Coleridge - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Henry Constable - James H. Cousins - William Cowper - Dinah Maria (Mulock) Craik - Christopher Pearse Cranch - Richard Crashaw - Arthur Shearly Cripps - Aleister Crowley - Victor James Daley - Thom Davies - William James Dawson - Margaret Deland - Aubrey Thomas De Vere - Ella Dietz - Richard Watson Dixon - Digby Mackworth Dolben - John Donne - Edward Dowden - Augusta Theodosia Drane - Agnes Mary Frances Duclaux - John Charles Earle - Edwin J. Ellis - Ralph Waldo Emerson - Frederick William Faber - Michael Field - Darrell Figgis - Phineas Fletcher - Christina Catherine Fraser-Tytler - Harold E. Goad - Eva Gore-Booth - Edmund Gosse - John Gray - Dora Greenwell - Alfred Gurney - Christopher Harvey - Frances Ridley Havergal - Robert Stephen Hawker - William Ernest Henley - George Herbert - Robert Herrick - Emily Henrietta Hickey - Kathleen Tynan Hinkson - Horace Holley - Edmond Gore Alexander Holmes - Paul Hookham - Gerard Manley Hopkins - Gertrude M. Hort - Lord Houghton - Laurence Housman - Jean Ingelow - Harriet Eleanor Hamilton King - Archibald Lampman - Richard Le Gallienne - Ruth Temple Lindsay - Alfred Comyn Lyall - George MacDonald - James Clarence Mangan - Andrew Marvell - John Masefield - Eugene Mason - George Meredith - Alice Meynell - Richard Monckton Milnes - Susan Mitchell - Harold Monro - Lewis Morris - John Spencer Muirhead - Frederick William Henry Myers - Sarojini Nayadu - Henry Newbolt - John Henry Newman - Roden Noel - Alfred Noyes - Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy - Henry Nutcombe Oxenham - John Oxenham - Francis Turner Palgrave - Coventry Patmore - Joseph Mary Plunkett - Edgar Allan Poe - Alexander Pope - May Probyn - Francis Quarles - James Rhoades - James Rennell Rodd - Richard Rolle - Christina Rossetti - Dante Gabriel Rossetti - George William Russell (A. E.) - George Santayana - William Bell Scott - William Sharp - Percy Bysshe Shelley - R. A. Eric Shepherd - Dora Sigerson Shorter - Robert Southwell - James Stephens - Algernon Charles Swinburne - Joshua Sylvester - John Addington Symonds - Arthur Symons - John Bannister Tabb - Rachel Annand Taylor - Alfred Tennyson - Edith Matilda Thomas - Francis Thompson - Thomas Traherne - Herbert Trench - Richard Chenevix Trench - Evelyn Underhill - Henry Vaughan - C. M. Verschoyle - Samuel Waddington - Arthur Edward Waite - Clarence A. Walworth - Frederick William Orde Ward - David Atwood Wasson - Isaac Watts - Charles Weekes - Walt Whitman - Oscar Wilde - Sarah Williams - Walter Leslie Wilmshurst - William Wordsworth - W. B. Yeats