become a martyr among the Moors.

She never undertook to know
What death with love should have to doe;
Nor has she e're yet understood
Why to shew love, she should shed blood
Yet though she cannot tell you why,
She can LOVE, and she can DY.

Spiritual love has never been more rapturously sung than in this
marvellous hymn. Little wonder that it haunted Coleridge's memory, and
that its deep emotion and rich melody stimulated his poet's ear and
imagination to write _Christabel_.[71] Crashaw's influence also on
Patmore, more especially on the _Sponsa Dei_, as well as later on
Francis Thompson, is unmistakable.

William Blake is one of the great mystics of the world; and he is by far
the greatest and most profound who has spoken in English. Like Henry
More and Wordsworth, he lived in a world of glory, of spirit and of
vision, which, for him, was the only real world. At the age of four he
saw God looking in at the window, and from that time until he welcomed
the approach of death by singing songs of joy which made the rafters
ring, he lived in an atmosphere of divine illumination. The material
facts of his career were simple and uneventful. He was an engraver by
profession, poet and painter by choice, mystic and seer by nature. From
the outer point of view his life was a failure. He was always crippled
by poverty, almost wholly unappreciated in the world of art and letters
of his day, consistently misunderstood even by his best friends, and
pronounced mad by those who most admired his work. Yet, like all true
mystics, he was radiantly happy and serene; rich in the midst of