It would not be profane to quote Robin Hyde to describe herself. Rather the lilting tapestry of her words as they enthral, lull, charm and surprise -- "You are the harlot of words: as a cunning woman draws the silks over her limbs, you have drawn words over your thought,..."

The lyrical Book of Nadath purports to say all in its first seven lines -- how and when it came to be written, perhaps also the why:

The words of Nadath, the false prophet, written in the year 1937, in a house that stands on a bay of New Zealand: a house of wood, iron and glass, and with the sea outside./ When a sick man's reason leaves him, his dreams and visions go in and out, mingling with the people who enter his room: and who shall say which of them has substance?/ So with a world that is sick: it cannot know the face of its truth.

The strains of history, biblical allusions, through the utterances of the "false prophet" convey the timelessness of a world where "It is a time of much knowledge, but little wisdom: of much might, but little power./ Knowledge is the house of voices that cry aloud,... But wisdom is the silence encompassing all. In that womb, seed shall be sown."

The words are not circumscribed by their meaning, for there are layers within layers of intense feeling, that Iris Wilkinson, the name Hyde was born to, voiced through the sheer need to put to paper what she strongly felt. One reading is not enough and going back through the pages all over again only opens another in-pain, new vistas of her fertile mind. The poet herself had described her work to friends as a poem written in verses like the Scriptures, "only of course much more elevated... a combination of dream and philosophy." Left unpublished for three score years and more, one must thank the perseverance of Michelle Leggot for ensuring that the manuscript could finally reach a hundred eyes.

And, as a critic puts it: "In editing and presenting us with Robin Hyde's long unpublished and brilliant prose poem, Michele Leggott has done New Zealand writing and literature an inestimable service. 'The Book of Nadath' is an intensely moving prophetic work which must surely rank with the best of the genre anywhere. It also makes a major reassessment of Hyde as a writer increasingly urgent and indicates that the unevenness of some of her work (brought on by the terrible pressures she worked under), the attitudes of male writers of the time, the restrictions on women in the 1920s and 1930s, and societal discrimination because of her personal circumstances, have prevented a full recognition of her near genius and place as one of this country's great founding writers. Leggott's wonderful and scholarly introduction is surely a major advance towards a full appreciation of Hyde's brilliance and contribution to literature."

Penned in 1937 and unearthed much after the poet's death in 1939, Nadath, is at best, a journey between the known and the unknown, the real and the imaginary. Known, because, as one skips and hops through the meandering lines, there are familiar strands of thoughts, thoughts one can fathom even today -- of the beautiful, awesome burden of being a woman, the gory red of war, the politicking of men, the "burden of the conqueror," the crude chains that make an "iron child," and that "poverty is poverty." The unknown, of course, remains unknown as the ever question of what is beyond the rainbow. The lack of understanding or perhaps that dash of confusion comes in the quaint turn of a phrase, or of a setting one can imagine and just about grasp. Yet, the compulsive magic of her words does not stop the reader from wandering into the unknown.

Woven into 14 sections, this moving prose-poem expressly conveys the dilemmas of identity, race and gender, even as we set out into the 21st century. It enthrals in its lyricism as effortless words open a whole new world of profound thoughts -- more relevant than ever today. Hyde's consistent themes, informs "The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature", are compassion for those on society's margins, a passionate desire to find "community" in a hostile world, a search for balance in her own emotions, and assertion of the full equality of women. "Her expression of these ideas became tauter, more precise and more immediate. The context of an external world is always clear, but her poetry, especially, reveals a contradictory and movingly perplexed inner life, for which her unpublished poems and journals provide further intimate record."

For a life so shortlived (1906-39), and the last days -- as also a major part of her brief existence, undoubtedly in pain, Hyde was immensely alive to the happenings about her and deeply concerned with the ways of the world, "...the seekers of this word, the fugitive and the oppressed: for all who cry out, and are unappeased." There is little that has remained outside the realm of her experiences -- be it India's long crusade for independence -- "The Three Who Come," the Sino-Japanese conflict -- "The Greenstone Shadow," or the barbarity of the Nazis. Nadath, or the false prophet, nevertheless, at the end of it all remains the commentator-sage-observer, soaking in all and at times, just gently allowing little pearls of wisdom to squeeze through.

Words like shadow, light, darkness, freedom, desolate, lonely, dreams, recur throughout her lines in various hues and tones. Is she speaking of her personal angst when she invokes: "Let the keen waves bring me a prow, and bear me away into another and softer wind, an island wind, where the vines run full of grapes. It is there I shall be satisfied." Was it in search of this "softer wind," of some kind of a reward or recognition, that she committed suicide twice and succeeded in her second attempt? "Hear me, singers of loneliness./... Where is my freedom and solace, and where shall my voice be heard? For I sing here, but there is no reward./ Where shall I sing as I have sung in dreams?/.... Others sing, and may receive; but I may live and die unheard." The fine line when Iris takes over from Robin blurs ever so often.

The hope of a new nation struggling to be born, to overthrow a foreign yoke in "The Three Who Come" could not have been put better. "There is an end to enmity between the dark and the white: the white hand that grasped always shall unclench and give, and a people find it soul./ The third comer shall reign." There are references to Mohandas Gandhi, India's Father of the Nation and his message of peace. "Yet when he is perished, a sigh shall go up over India. She shall remember his day, or ever the sandal was steeped in blood." Wonder what words would have poured out of her had she lived to see his assassination, his sandals actually steeped in blood.

Not only the fight of a nation for freedom, Hyde speaks for the freedom of all kindred but shackled spirits. 'The House of Woman' could well be a tribute to the female gender -- be it human or bird or squirrel -- never seeking for self, but ever ready to give up everything be it for father, mate or child. The sense of inequity that runs through the lines resolves in a simple, almost resigned thought at the end. "She has chosen as she wills, and it may be that she has chosen well."

Almost epigrammatic and John Donne-like, "Blessed Be They" though all of a dozen lines holds a kernel of truth. The same may be said of "The Time-Servers," which conveys all about truth and lies in just six lines and a half. Unequivocally, when Hyde spoke of Nadath being a combination of dream and philosophy, she was aware and conscious of the seriousness with which she had voiced some political, personal and spiritual truths.