Bulwer Lytton's _Milton_ was, if one may believe the press notices, the most favorably received of his poems, but it is a signal example of aspiring verse that misses both the sensuous beauty of poetry, and the intellectual content of philosophy. Milton is portrayed as the life-long lover of an incarnation of beauty too attenuated to be human and too physical to be purely ideal. At first Milton devotes himself to this vision exclusively, but, hearing the call of his country in distress, he abandons her, and their love is not suffered to culminate till after death. Bulwer Lytton cites the _Phaedrus_ of Plato as the basis of his allegory, reminding us, The Athenian guessed that when our souls descend From some lost realm (sad aliens here to be), Dim broken memories of the state before, Form what we call our reason... ... Is not Love, Of all those memories which to parent skies Mount struggling back--(as to their source, above, In upward showers, imprisoned founts arise:) Oh, is not Love the strongest and the clearest? Greater importance attaches to a recent treatment of the theme by George Edward Woodberry. His poem, _Agathon_, dealing with the young poet of Plato's _Symposium_, is our most literal interpretation of Platonism. Agathon is sought out by the god of love, Eros, who is able to realize his divinity only through the perfection of man's love of beauty. He chooses Agathon as the object of instruction because Agathon is a poet, one of those Whose eyes were more divinely touched In that long-memoried world whence souls set forth. As the poem opens, Agathon is in the state of the favorite poet of nineteenth century imagination, loving, yet discontented with, the beauty of the senses. To Diotima, the wise woman of the _Symposium_, he expresses his unhappiness: Still must I mourn That every lovely thing escapes the heart Even in the moment of its cherishing. Eros appears and promises Agathon that if he will accept his love, he may find happiness in eternal beauty, and his poetical gift will be ennobled: Eros I am, the wooer of men's hearts. Unclasp thy lips; yield me thy close embrace; So shall thy thoughts once more to heaven climb, Their music linger here, the joy of men. Agathon resolves to cleave to him, but at this point Anteros, corresponding to Plato's Venus Pandemos, enters into rivalry with Eros for Agathon's love. He shows the poet a beautiful phantom, who describes the folly of one who devotes himself to spiritual love: The waste desire be his, and sightless fate, Him light shall not revisit; late he knows The love that mates the heaven weds the grave. Agathon starts to embrace her, but seeing in her face the inevitable decay of sensual beauty, he recoils, crying, In its fiery womb I saw The twisted serpent ringing woe obscene, And far it lit the pitchy ways of hell.