SOURCE: Schaefer, Charles W. “Lawrence's ‘Mystic.’” The Explicator 58, no. 1 (fall 1999): 31-3.

In the following essay, Schaefer offers an explication of Lawrence's poem, “Mystic.”

“Mystic” is a poetic exercise in demythologizing mystical experience, demystifying mysticism, one could say, while defending its elevated function in the life of the mind. Mystical experience was vital to D. H. Lawrence. Toward the end of “Excurse” in Women in Love, the cautious reader will note repeated use of some form of the word mystery in Lawrence's description of the physical relationship between Ursula and Birkin.

The tone of “Mystic” is sardonic-colloquial, beginning with an almost out of-the-side-of-the-mouth mutter: “They call all experience of the senses mystic, when the experience is considered.” Beginning as he does with the imprecisely referential third person plural, Lawrence establishes two facts: first, the poetic voice is that of a common man who refers to his fellows as “They...