New Lyre - Spring-Summer 2025 (Issue 7)

Our latest journal of timeless verse and culture

Jun 02, 2025

∙ Paid

We’re happy to announce the release of our New Lyre - Spring/Summer 2025 issue! This marks the seventh issue, and it should keep readers busy for a good part of the summer. As always, the entire New Lyre vault can be accessed here.

Press Release/Editorial

Dear readers,

The first known civilization to formalize man’s relationship to the ineffable mysteries of Truth was Ancient Egypt. With its sacred monuments built in alignment with the stars, temples adorned with the language of mysteries—the hieroglyphics—and its immortalizing death rites, Egypt has come to embody man’s hunger for the numinous, transcendent and everlasting.

This hunger for mystery is innate and inexhaustible. With its wide range of new timeless compositions, contributions by both new promising voices and seasoned versifiers, and visionary poetic scope, this issue is a testament to man’s eternal yearning for the mysterious and unknown.

Afterall, it may be said that all we really know are mysteries. As Nicholas of Cusa argued, man never knows Truth so precisely that he can’t approach it with infinitely greater precision. Therefore, all positive assertions made by man necessarily take the form of conjecture, given that our understanding of the known depends on our apprehension of something fundamentally unknown. The many facts we gather and the assertions we make encompass the various details and aspects of a mystery whose absolute and enduring nature we can only surmise.

Despite the vast distance separating us from that ancient civilization born along the gushing Nile, the hunger for mystery is no less abundant in our age. From the endless pursuit of altered states and “self-actualization” to the explosive popularity of psychedelic retreats and growing preoccupation with alien “gnosis,” the often strange and silly manifestations of this hunger are a testament to its enduring nature. Regardless of the many deceiving, quasi-materialistic and substance-fueled forms which it has often taken in our times, man continues to yearn.

While many of our modern structures may no longer be aligned with the stars and contemporary song rarely hallows anything more than the profane or mundane, poetry remains one of the chief vehicles for articulating and conveying the essential mysteries of life, existence and creation. Rather than distracting us or obscuring more pressing matters, meditation on such mysteries brings clarity, as a song gives form and color to our emotions, or a poem captures life in its eternal Truth.

Thus, our latest issue explores the themes of ancient Egypt, its mysteries, and mankind’s relationship to the ineffable as expressed in verse and song.

Included in our rich offering is an assortment of finely crafted translations of Ancient Egyptian Harper Songs, as well as a complete translation of Schiller’s “The Mission of Moses,” which explores the origins of Mosaic Law and and the enduring legacy of Egypt’s “Mysteries.” This issue also includes new original Egypt-themed poems, which re-imagine the sacred hymns of the celebrated Pharaonic civilization.

Alongside our Egypt-themed works, you’ll discover many original poems exploring our wonder- and paradox-filled world, and the distinguished poets who haven’t lost sight of life’s essential and enduring mystery.

We invite you gently to read, and kindly to judge, our journal.