Cooperators of Truth

This is the poem that the entire Ascent of Mt. Carmel is an explanation of. It is a poem that speaks of the union of the soul with God through the dark night.  

Stanzas

I

In a dark night,

With anxious love inflamed,

O, happy lot!

Forth unobserved I went,

My house being now at rest.

II

In darkness and in safety,

By the secret ladder, disguised,

O, happy lot!

In darkness and concealment,

My house being now at rest.

III

In that happy night,

In secret, seen of none,

Seeing nought myself,

Without other light or guide

Save that which in my heart was burning.

IV

That light guided me

More surely than the noonday sun

To the place where He was waiting for me,

Whom I knew well,

And where none appeared.

V

O, guiding night;

O, night more lovely than the dawn;

O, night that hast united

The lover with His beloved,

And changed her into her love.

VI

On my flowery bosom,

Kept whole for Him alone.

There He reposed and slept;

And I caressed Him, and the waving

Of the cedars fanned Him.

VII

As His hair floated in the breeze

That blew from the turret,

He struck me on the neck

With His gentle hand,

And all sensation left me.

VIII

I continued in oblivion lost,

My head was resting on my love;

Lost to all things and myself,

And, amid the lilies forgotten,

Threw all my cares away.

Saint John of the Cross, Benedict Zimmermann, and David Lewis, The Ascent of Mount Carmel (London: Thomas Baker, 1906), 1–2.

This is the beginning of a podcast audio recording of a public domain version of the Ascent of Mount Carmel by St. John of the Cross. In this first podcast we are introduced to the title, the author, the translator, the editor, as well as St. John of the Cross’s original argument – where he explains what he is setting out to do in this text.