Amazon.com description: Product Description: DOUBTLESS the very greatest poetry would follow at a certain disadvantage a preface that claimed so much for it as Mr. Waite claims in his preface for these latest verses of his; it is saying a great deal, therefore, when one has to acknowledge that even suffering under this disadvantage the poems that make up his " Book of Mystery and Vision " impress one not only with a sense of the depth and greatness of the thought they embody, but every here and there also by their high imaginative and poetical qualities. Mr. Waite claims to have given adequate utterance here for the first time in poetical literature to the sacramental significance of the universe, though it may seem to some of us that revelations of this same mystic significance shine or glimmer elusively through almost all the great poetry that has ever been written. However this may be, it is sufficient that Mr. Waite does fulfill his purpose, and in these poems of his more or less clearly and beautifully shadows forth in living words something of the inner spiritual life and meaning that is mystically symbolized to the seeing eye in every manifestation of nature, for—

"—in those moments, rarely known,
When the soul feels her wings,
Emblazoned upon star and stone
There flash immortal things;
Through Nature's gates wide open thrown
A wild voice sings and sings.

Comes secret sense through veils confessed,
And God eludes no more,
But doth most surely manilest,
And all His worlds restore;
Methinks that word of peace and rest
High-seated saints read o'er.

Lost word and last word, far and long,
Heard through the closing gate,
Dies the dim echo of thy song!
Soul, is it dark and late?
Vast is the void, though hope is strong,
We languish, but await."

This quest of the Lost Word, the truth that has been forgotten or has never yet been found, is the keynote of much that is best in the book. If there were space here for quotations one might quote passages memorable for their music or their beauty of thought or expression from " The Morality of the Lost Word," a dramatic " mystery " play, or from such shorter poems as " How I came to the sea," "How I also sang Mass," "To you in absence," "Valete," and some half-dozen others. There is true gold of poetry in the book, and often more of real thought and suggestiveness in a single page than would go to the making of a whole volume of average minor verse.