In an agony of horror and contrition, he recalls Eros, who expounds to him how love, beginning with sensuous beauty, leads one to ideality: Let not dejection on thy heart take hold That nature hath in thee her sure effects, And beauty wakes desire. Should Daphne's eyes, Leucothea's arms, and clinging white caress, The arch of Thetis' brows, be made in vain? But, he continues, In fair things There is another vigor, flowing forth From heavenly fountains, the glad energy That broke on chaos, and the outward rush Of the eternal mind;... ... Hence the poet's eye That mortal sees, creates immortally The hero more than men, not more than man, The type prophetic. Agathon, in an ecstasy of comprehension, chants the praises of love which Plato puts into his mouth in the _Symposium_. In conclusion, Urania sums up the mystery of love and genius: For truth divine is life, not love, Creative truth, and evermore Fashions the object of desire Through love that breathes the spirit's fire. We may fittingly conclude a discussion of the poet as lover with the _Epipsychidion_, not merely because it is the most idealistic of the interpretations of Platonic love given by nineteenth century poets, but because by virtue of the fact that it describes Shelley's personal experience, it should be most valuable in revealing the attitude toward love of one possessing the purest of poetic gifts. [Footnote: Treatment of this theme is foreshadowed in _Alastor_.] The prominence given to Shelley's earthly loves in this poem has led J. A. Symonds to deny that it is truly Platonic. He remarks, While Shelley's doctrine in _Epipsychidion_ seems Platonic, it will not square with the _Symposium_.... When a man has formed a just conception of universal beauty, he looks back with a smile on those who find their soul's sphere in the love of some mere mortal object. Tested by this standard, Shelley's identification of Intellectual Beauty with so many daughters of earth, and his worshipping love of Emilia, is spurious Platonism.[Footnote: _Shelley_, p. 142.] Perhaps this failure to break altogether with the physical is precisely the distinction between the love of the poet and the love of the philosopher with whom Plato is concerned. I do not believe that the Platonism of this poem is intrinsically spurious; the conception of Emilia seems to be intended simply as a poetic personification of abstract beauty, but it is undeniable that at times this vision does not mean abstract beauty to Shelley at all, but the actual Emilia Viviani. He has protested against this judgment, "The _Epipsychidion_ is a mystery; as to real flesh and blood, you know that I do not deal with those articles." The revulsion of feeling that turned him away from Emilia, however, taught him how much of his feeling for her had entered into the poem, so that, in June, 1822, Shelley wrote,