SOURCE: Raine, Kathleen. “Edwin Muir.” In Defending Ancient Springs, pp. 1-16. London, New York and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1967.

In the following essay from a book-length work on mysticism in poets such as Yeats, Blake, and Coleridge, Raine—a poet and literary critic—considers the use of fable and universal archetypes, along with influences from Scottish ballads and German literature, in the poetry of Muir.

When Edwin Muir died, in January 1959, at the age of seventy-one, he was still at the height of his poetic powers, and many of his finest poems are among his last. Time, that so remorselessly fades some poems which in their day seemed impressive, makes others, at first little noticed, seem to glow with some inner light. Edwin Muir's poems belong to the second kind: time does not fade them, and it becomes clear that their excellence owes nothing to the accidental circumstances...