In this substantive collection of essays and aphorisms deriving, in large part, from weblogs already published by John O'Loughlin on the Internet, the author has spanned, as suggested by the title, a wide range of both poetical and philosophical subjects, with some autobiographical and other topics included for good measure, although his principal concern remains, as ever, the exploration and elucidation of metaphysical truth, together with an outline of what stands in its way or strives, vainly, to replace it from positions, also well-documented in his writings, either contrary to or falling well short of it in some intermediate realm better suited to those for whom anything metaphysical could only be described as lying 'beyond the pale' of their human-all-too-human limitations. In this book such limitations have little or no place, and the reader capable of broaching the text in all its various permutations will be the freer in his mind for having done so. For what is that Biblical saying about 'the truth shall set you free' if not a pointer towards metaphysical freedom from worldly and/or netherworldly limitations?