This dramatic epic poem with its lavishly illustrated pen and pencil drawings interprets the solid Christian hope of the Resurrection with great imagination. It's lyrical stanzas open up possibilities for musical arrangements and performance.

In his notes on The Mystic Mountain Father Dunstan explains some of the imagery: "The source of the poem are many. There are, of course, those great massifs of the epic mode - Homer, Dante, Milton. One does not easily escape their shadows. But more immediately, stemming from the monasitic celebration of the Liturgy and the psalmody of the Hours, there are allusions, paraphrases and a few quotations from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Central to the whole symbolism is Paul's fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians."

"Father Dunstan Massey's illustrated poem is a perfect wedding of text and image by one artist such as has not been seen since at least the work of William Blake. By making the Resurrection visible he has made it believable ... Dunstan's text speaks to our deepest longings - not only to escape the conquest by death but also to be fully known and loved." Dr Loren Wilkinson, Regent College

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From the concluding climax of the poetic scenario, after the Mourner has joined the crowd of resurrected mortals, all ascending a mysterious Mountain made of many precious stones:

'The Mountain gathers us in arms
of linen-like snow and silken light
his voice is bounding like alpenhorns
echoing upon the heights; in smiling
alabaster his face bends down, welcoming;
his crown is a wedding of lights; Rabboni
Master, speak, I know it is Thee I see - '

FIRST VOICE
'I am your Father from ages past;
of the only-begotten, the begotten
progenitor of the Son, my word to thee
they maker, O First-formed, my Adam, my Eve.

'And I am your mother even, though woman
forget the child of her womb, yet
will I never forget, O Israel, thee,
my child so piteous to me.'

SECOND VOICE
'And I am your brother, Yeshua,
Jesu, the one betrayed, for silver sold;
be not distressed, I have gone before
to prepare mansions there, for thee!

I am the lover, the bridegroom
coming for the bride, so light
the lamps, hymeneal, sister of mine,
sound, epithalamial, the chant.'

THIRD VOICE
'And I am living in your spirit,
the Gift, and give of life, the healer,
physician, your abiding consoler,
your guest in that lighting of lamps.

'O come, my people, unto me
out of Sodom and Gomorra,
Egypt and Babylon; come now
out of desert and the sea
unto me; the mountain follows
where springs of water
or of wine, as rivers run.'