Romantic poets and their heirs sing in philosophical twilight, addressing issues of being and knowing while almost ignorant of the guidance available to them in the thought of Aristotle and Aquinas. Montgomery in considerable measure recovers the wisdom of pre-Kantian naturalism and with it a vantage from which to assess Wordsworth, Keats, Hopkins, Eliot, and Stevens, each measured by their attempt to regain the basis of poetic analogy in actual, extramental beingggg

- John Alvis, professor and director, American Studies Program, University of Dallas,

Marion Montgomery's meditation on the plight of autonomous man cast adrift in a world of his own devising takes us through the history of philosophy and literature. The center that holds in the great singers of being he finds in the companionable relation between reason and intuition as evinced above all in the persuasive tuning of intellect and the truth of things in personal experience. This is a lovely and deeply felt rumination on the human condition by a distinguished poet doing a philosophers work. Warmly recommended.

- Ellis Sandoz, Louisiana State University,

Romantic poets and their heirs sing in philosophical twilight, addressing issues of being and knowing while almost ignorant of the guidance available to them in the thought of Aristotle and Aquinas. Montgomery in considerable measure recovers the wisdom of pre-Kantian naturalism and with it a vantage from which to assess Wordsworth, Keats, Hopkins, Eliot, and Stevens, each measured by their attempt to regain the basis of poetic analogy in actual, extramental being

- John Alvis, professor and director, American Studies Program, University of Dallas,