Poems of St. John of the Cross

St John of the Cross is the supreme poet of the mystical tradition in Christianity. His poems are the most concise and beautiful expression of the experience of the love of God in Western literature. They are also the inspiration for his great prose works, which are extended commentaries on the poems. Many of these stem from his imprisonment in Toledo in 1577-78, from which he made a dramatic escape, taking refuge in a discalced (barefoot) Carmelite convent, where he apparently dictated poems from a notebook he had managed to bring out of prison.