This is a collection of the fiction and poetry of one of the twentieth century's most influential and significant thinkers. Barfield is known widely for his explorations of human consciousness, the history of language, the origins of poetic effect, and the interaction of the disciplines, especially literature and the hard sciences. This book presents Barfield as a writer of imaginative literature.

In the stories, one finds both post-war displacement and Bloomsburian ironies. In the two short novels, Barfield gives us two stunning versions of the Apocalypse. In his poetry he explores the varieties of human experience, often in radical relation to the past. A seemingly conventional poetic introduces explosive theological and sexual issues, confrontations with urban despair and fragmentation.

Barfield's creative work is original, daring, and prophetic. His voice heralds a new age of consciousness of which our time is becoming increasingly aware.

Jeanne Clayton Hunter is Associate Professor at Nassau Community College, and Thomas Kranidas is Professor and Chair of the English Department at State University of New York, Stony Brook.

Introduction Jeanne Clayton Hunter and Thomas Kranidas

Poetry

Day

Sonnet: Once, once, this evening, let me say: I love you!

Translation from Petrarch: Amor, ed io si pien di meraviglia

La Dame A Licorne

Sonnet: How shall I work that she may not forget

The Silent Piano (For E.B.)

Michaelmas

Bad Day

Song of the Bakerloo

The Song They Sing

Flirting

Girl in Tube

A Visit to Beatrice

Can Light Be Golden?

Pollaiuolo's Apollo and Daphne

Piero di Cosimo's The Death of Procris

Sonnet: I am much inclined towards a life of ease

The Angry Boffin

Sapphics

Emeritus (on not trying to publish verse)

Fifty-Three

Al Fresco (on Modern Poetry)

The Queen's Beast (1954)

Escape

You're Wrong!

Funeral Oration

Medusa

Song of Anger

Hagar and Ishmael

I. Hagar and Ishmael

II. The Spy

III. Ishmael

Gender

The Merman

Enlightenment

At a Promenade Concert

The Milkmaid and the Unicorn

Video Meliora

Sonnet: Where can we hope to swim in 1ove's bright wave?

"How dolefully you raked into a blaze"

Sonnet: When the too-muchness of this angry trade

The Song of Pity or The Compassionate Society

Speech by a Gadarene Cabinet Minister

Sonnet: You said, and not as one exaggerating

The Sonnet and Its Uses

Rust

In

Mr. Walker

The Coming of Whitsun

Risen

Washing of Feet

Sacrament

Gizeh

Beatitude

A Meditation

From Orpheus: A Verse Drama Act II (lines 89-259)

Closing lines from "Riders on Pegasus"

Prose

Short Stories

Dope

The Devastated Area

Mrs. Cadogan

Two Prophetic Nouvelles

The Rose on the Ash-Heap (from the novel in manuscript English People)

Night Operation

Afterword Owen Barfield

Notes on the Poetry

Index