Poetry Mirrors A Man's Belief

In selecting his title, Thomas Merton has pointed out the inadequacy of the poems in this latest collection. The quote on the frontispiece from Leon Bloy reads "When those who love God try to talk about him, their words are blind lions looking for springs in the desert." Merton's lines are fervent and usually very expressive but, for the most part, fall short in the description of the Divine; the title, "Tears of the Blind Lions," suggests that the poet is lamenting his own failure to express his love for God in verse.

Morton, however, is very successful in his defense of the contemplative vocation and in his scorn for the modern Godless civilization. "The Quickening of St. John the Baptist" likens the members of a cloistered order to the unborn Baptist waiting in his mother's womb for the coming of Christ's mother, Mary, with the announcement of the anticipated birth of God, the Son. The speechless Trappists and Carmelites are "sealed in the dark and waiting to be born;" they are the sentinels that the world must post to hear "the first far drums of Christ."

The most effective poetry in this collection is in "To the Immaculate Virgin, on a Winter Night." Though contemptuous in nature, it is a clam, lamenting scorn--subtly cognizant of the fact that the poet himself is a part of the world he is criticizing. "Lady, the night has got us by the heart--words turn to ice in my dry throat praying for a land without a prayer." Throughout Merton expresses him self simply and sublimely--"the night is falling and the dark steals all the blood from the scarred west." Religious poetry is as its best when it is unrefined emotion, when the poet does not try to explain theological riddles. Merton has reproduced a poetic experience without contaminating the purity of his emotion with any insincerity.