0

Poem: “Where Can Your Hiding Be?”

by on Sep 23, 2012 in Poetry
Print This Article

Where Can Your Hiding Be?
Dark Night of the Soul II
Part One

BRIDE
Where is your hiding place?
Beloved, you’ve left me to moan
While like a stag you flee
Leaving the wound with me?
I followed, calling loud, but you’d gone

O shepherds, you that, yonder
Go through the sheepfolds of the slope on high,
If you, as there you wander,
Should chance my love to spy,
Then tell him that I suffer, grieve, and die.

To fetch my loves more near,
Amongst these mountains and ravines I’ll stray,
Nor pluck flowers, nor for fear
Of prowling beasts delay,
But pass through forts and frontiers on my way.

QUESTION TO ALL CREATURES
O thickets, densely-trammelled,
Which my love’s hand has sown along the height:
O field of green, enameled
With blossoms, tell me right
If he has passed across you in his flight.

REPLY OF THE CREATURES
Diffusing showers of grace
In haste among these groves his path he took,
And only with his face,
Glancing around the place,
Has clothed them in his beauty with a look.

St. John of the Cross


St. John of the Cross was a priest and a reformer of the Carmelite Order. He was born June 24th, 1542, and died in 1591. Both his poetry and his studies on the growth of the soul are considered one of the peaks of all Spanish Literature.  St. John of the Cross is considered one of the foremost poets in the Spanish language. Two of his poems—the Spiritual Canticle and Dark Night of the Soul are considered masterpieces of Spanish poetry for their style, rich symbolism, and imagery.  He is one of the thirty-three Doctors of the Church.