SELECT POEMS

M. Guyon’s poetic works were composed from a personal perspective of the spiritual or mystical life. These several efforts combined with her other public treatises she addresses issues and then responds to them. This is not done as many others in the form of a dialogue of fictional characters, but in presenting a premise and furthering it through speculations and supporting connections of various Christian mystical writers. Madame Guyon, as an author has gone to great lengths and has bestowed great labor and research in this presentation, which she never presents to the public. She has endeavored to be as instructive and all encompassing regarding both the early, medieval and contemporary authors. Moreover, she has, therefore, avoided dry and tedious dissertations; and has mingled story and anecdote with solid matter and brought before the Christian mystical reader in a connected view, what she found scattered in many books, chiefly in European lands. In this endeavor she hopes that the learned reader will find in these for-gone mystics much that is new to us and that it is not, also, interesting and instructive, the fault must be in the author's mode of presenting it, rather than in the subject matter of the book.