A gift from my aunt, who also loves poetry and God. Mountain Breezes is the full collection of poetry written by Amy Carmichael, a Catholic missionary from England who spent most of her life working in India caring for orphans, neglected children, and fighting sex trafficking and child prostitution in temples. The book is arranged by theme, each section devoted to a different theme. I did actually like this major division. It makes it easier to find what poems you need, whether you need encouragement, assurance, reminders of God’s power and awe, etc. There were quite a few poems that I highlighted or dog-eared in the book. Carmichael has a fairly simple way of writing they makes it easy to understand. She does use a lot of thees, thous, etc (she lived from late 1800s-mid 1900s) but otherwise it is simple, lovely, and rhythmic.
I will say I enjoyed the first half-2/3 of the book more than the last couple of sections, and sometimes I would tire easily of reading the poems. I think this is at least partly because within the major thematic divisions, poems are arranged by sub-theme and other similarities. So you’ll have a bunch of poems all together referencing Fire, a bunch of poems about prayer, about nature, etc. I would have preferred to see the poems arranged chronologically within those same major divisions. Especially considering she wrote about faith so much, it would have been interesting to see her own growth as a Christian as well as the context in which she was writing. For example, there’s a series of poems praying over sick/dying children. What was going on (as seen through other poems written around that time), how was the situation impacting her faith, etc. I wanted the arrangement to further humanize Carmichael.