The Oak Tree and the Branch

Nicholas Hagger’s Collected Poems contained 30 volumes of his poems, and Life Cycle and Other New Poems contained volumes 31-34. Together they reflect his quest along the Mystic Way, and the vision of unity and harmony to which it led. The Oak Tree and the Branch contains volumes 35-41 and continues his presentation of apparent conflicts (Brexit, coronavirus, war and extreme suffering) and the underlying unity of the universe within his Arcadia. The Oak Tree and the Branch sees the UK’s departure from Europe as a lopped branch from the Tree of Tradition of European civilisation. The Tapestry dwells on his rootedness in the past, especially in the Tudor time. A Plague in Arcadia: Oneness with Nature and the Universe presents a host of Nature poems in his local Fairmead’s Arcadian paradise during the spread of coronavirus, the Covid plague. An Oval Cloud presents a sequence of encounters with an oval cloud seen behind his closed eyes, which he tries to understand. Court Poems: More Royal Classical Odes includes Royal events: a wedding, two funerals and a coronation, and another lopped branch. In Arcady: A Gong and Padded Stick surveys his Providential life. And the harrowing Agony in Arcady: Stroke wrings from him the whole range of emotions as he comes to terms with his daughter’s severe stroke (another lopped branch) and heroic endurance. Hagger’s mystical vision of the unity of Nature, the universe and humankind shines through all these new poems. Hagger derives his inspiration from the 16th- and 17th-century Metaphysical poets and seeks to unite the later Augustan and Romantic traditions. These poems reconcile the soul’s harmony with the universe and the conflicts in public life, and add significantly to the themes of Collected Poems, Classical Odes, Life Cycle and Hagger’s two poetic epics, Overlord and Armageddon, all published by O-Books. They carry forward his Universalist approach to poetry which unveils an ordered universe behind the apparent chaos of world events