Kathleen Raine, 95; English Poet in Visionary Romantic Tradition

Kathleen Raine, a poet and scholar whose verse explored the realms of nature and the spirit, has died. She was 95.

Raine died Sunday in London, according to obituaries published in several British newspapers. No cause of death was given.

Twice married, Raine was never at home in the domestic environment -- she once described feeling “as if I were living in someone else’s dream.”

After several unsatisfactory jobs, she met the nephew of the Indian mystic Rama Coomaraswamy Tambimuttu who invited her to contribute to his new magazine, Poetry London -- and launched her lifelong passion for all things Indian.

“Stone and Flower” (1943), illustrated by Barbara Hepworth, was her first published collection, followed by “Living in Time” (1946) and “The Pythoness” (1949).

Her chaste love affair with writer Gavin Maxwell, a homosexual, helped inspire the works in “The Year One” (1952), which combines natural images with a high degree of self-consciousness.

Raine stayed frequently with Maxwell at Sandaig in the Scottish Highlands, but the relationship cooled in 1956 after she lost his pet otter, Mijbil, the inspiration for Maxwell’s best-selling book “Ring of Bright Water.”

Raine wrote in the visionary romantic tradition of William Butler Yeats and William Blake.

Reviewing her “Collected Poems” in 1956, fellow poet Philip Larkin praised her lack of jargon and vulgarity.

“There is no domesticity, no coziness, and love poems of a personal nature, the introduction tells us, have also gone,” he wrote. “What remains is the vatic and universal.”

Raine won many poetry prizes, including the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1992. In 2000, she was made a commander of the British Empire.

Raine was born in London and studied natural sciences at Girton College, Cambridge. She graduated in 1929.

She is survived by a son and daughter from her second marriage.