Sometimes thou seemest not as thyself alone, But as the meaning of all things that are; A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar Some heavenly solstice, hushed and halcyon, Whose unstirred lips are music's visible tone; Whose eyes the sungates of the soul unbar, Being of its furthest fires oracular, The evident heart of all life sown and mown. Thus also Mrs. Browning says of her earlier ideal loves, Their shining fronts, Their songs, their splendors (better, yet the same, As river water hallowed into founts) Met in thee. [Footnote: _Sonnets of the Portuguese_, XXVI.] Reflection of this sort almost inevitably leads the poet to the conviction that his real love is eternal beauty. Such is the progress of Rossetti's thought in _Heart's Hope_: Lady, I fain would tell how evermore Thy soul I know not from thy body nor Thee from myself, neither our love from God. The whole of Diotima's theory of the ascent to ideal beauty is here implicit in three lines. In the same spirit Christina Rossetti identifies her lover with her Christian faith: Yea, as I apprehend it, love is such I cannot love you if I love not Him, I cannot love Him if I love not you. [Footnote: _Monna Innominata_, VI. See also Robert Bridges, _The of Love_ (a sonnet sequence).] It is obvious that, from the standpoint of the beloved at least, there is danger in this identification of all beauties as manifestations of the ideal. It is unpropitious to lifelong affection for one person. As a matter of fact, though the English taste for decorous fidelity has affected some poets, on the whole they have not hesitated to picture their race as fickle. Plato's account of the second step in the ascent of the lover, "Soon he will himself perceive that the beauty of one form is truly related to the beauty of another; and then if beauty in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form is one and the same," [Footnote: _Symposium_, Jowett translation, Sec.210.] is made by Shelley the justification of his shifting enthusiasms, which the world so harshly censured. In _Epipsychidion_ Shelley declares, I never was attached to that great sect Whose doctrine is that each one should select Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion.... True love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright Gazing on many truths.... Narrow the heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, The life that wears, the spirit that creates One object and one form, and builds thereby A sepulchre for its eternity.