The earlier conception of heavenly love, as related to absolute beauty, is not, however, the more important of the two themes of this poetry. From the very nature of the love itself, although it could be described in accordance with certain Platonic conceptions, it could not be the subject of a personal treatment; it gave no sufficient outlet for the passion of love. This was afforded only by that heavenly love which is the love of man for the unseen realities of the spiritual world. The full treatment which this latter subject receives in English poetry testifies to the strong hold which the teachings of Platonism had upon religious experience in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Platonism afforded not only the philosophic basis for the object of this passion, but it also acted as a corrective tendency in checking the influence of an alien idea, erotic mysticism. Heavenly love, understood as a love known in the soul for a spiritual, or as it was then called, heavenly beauty, sprang out of the treatment to which Plato had subjected love in the “Symposium.” In English it appears in two separate forms, although in both it consists in gaining a correct idea of the relation of the beauty known to the senses as compared with that known by the soul. The only difference in the two expressions is that the object of the passion is variously described. In Spenser’s “Hymne of Heavenly Beautie” occurs the first form of this love. The heavenly beauty celebrated in this “Hymne” is the Platonic wisdom, Sapience, as Spenser calls it, the same high reality with which he had identified Una. (l. 186.) The subject of the love in the “Hymne” is formally presented as God, who is described as “that Highest farre beyond all telling, Fairer then all the rest which there appeare, Though all their beauties joynd together were: How then can mortall tongue hope to expresse, The image of such endlesse perfectnesse?” (ll. 104–108.) Yet the real subject is the praise of Sapience, to which somewhat more than one-third of the “Hymne” is devoted. A description of her transcendent beauty and her power to fill the soul of the beholder with true insight into the relative beauty of this world of sense and that of spirit is the climax of the poem. Among all the attributes of God mentioned, His truth, His love, His grace, His mercy, His might, His judgment (ll. 113–115), the greatest is Sapience, who is described as sitting in the very bosom of the Almighty. (l. 187.) The fairness of her face, he says, none can tell; no painter or poet can adequately describe her; his own powers are so weak that he can only admire, not presuming to picture her. (ll. 207–241.) So completely, however, does she occupy the field of spiritual vision in the happy mortals that behold her, that