In this important book, Diane McColley demonstrates the language of poetry, the language of responsible science, and the language of moral and political philosophy all to be necessary parts of public discourse.

McColley offers close readings of poems and the musical settings of analogous texts, and discusses the philosophy, performance, and disputed political and ecclesiastical implications of polyphony.

It considers poems, visual images, and music concerned with divine and human creativity and interprets these works as salutary examples for the creation of the arts and the preservation of the earth.