The Complete Works of Richard Crashaw, Volume I

Richard Crashaw wrote poetry that burns. In an age of measured wit and intellectual precision, his verses pulse with a kind of holy fever, mixing sensual sweetness with divine longing in ways that shocked his contemporaries and still startle modern readers. This volume gathers his complete works from the mid-17th century, including the famous 'Steps to the Temple' and 'The Delights of the Muses' alongside previously unpublished poems that reveal the full range of his eccentric, ecstatic gift. Crashaw was a Catholic convert who fled England for Rome, and his poetry carries that urgency. His religious verses don't simply praise God they ache for Him, reaching toward the divine with an intensity that blurs the line between earthly and heavenly love. The collection opens with dedications to influential patrons and a preface that positions Crashaw as a crucial bridge between secular poetic tradition and spiritual transcendence. Here is devotional poetry as passionate encounter, not polite reflection. For readers who find Donne too controlled or Herbert too neat, Crashaw offers something rarer: a poet who seems genuinely unhinged by faith, writing verses that feel less like literature and more like testimony from the edge of mystical experience.