Platonism in English poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries — Plato — John Shaqi
Platonism in English poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
Plato · en
“Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust,
And thou my mind aspire to higher things:
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:
Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.
Draw in thy beames, and humble all thy might,
To that sweet yoke, where lasting freedomes be:
Which breakes the clowdes and opens forth the light,
That doth both shine and give us sight to see.
O take fast hold, let that light be thy guide,
In this small course which birth drawes out to death,
And thinke how evill becommeth him to slide,
Who seeketh heav’n, and comes of heav’nly breath.
Then farewell world, thy uttermost I see,
Eternall Love maintaine thy life in me.”
(S. cx.)
The appeal which Platonism made to the English poets in its doctrine of
a heavenly love was through its power to stir the minds with a deep
sense of that beauty which God was understood to possess. The
application of the principle of beauty to God resulted in a note of joy
and in an exaltation of soul in the religious mind, which, after
forsaking the beauty of this world of sense, could enjoy the great
principle of beauty in the beatific vision of God. Such a strain of joy
may be heard in Drummond, in John Norris, and even in the quiet lyrics
of George Herbert.
The sight of God in His absolute beauty is considered by these poets as
the end of the soul’s endeavor. According to John Norris God is the
divine excellence,
“Which pleases either _mind_ or _sense_,
Tho’ thee by different names we call!
Search Nature through, there still wilt be
The _Sum_ of all that’s good in her _Variety_.”
He thus exhorts the soul to rise to a sight of Him.
“But do not thou, my Soul, fixt here remain,
All streams of Beauty here below
Do from that immense Ocean flow,
And thither they should lead _again_.
Trace then these Streams, till thou shalt be
At length _o’erwhelm’d_ in Beauty’s _boundless Sea_.”
(“Beauty,” stz. 4, 10.)
According to Drummond, the one “choicest bliss” of life is the
possession of God’s beauty as a burning passion within the soul. In “An
Hymn of True Happiness” he teaches that supreme felicity does not
consist in the enjoyment of earth’s treasures, of sensuous beauty, or of
other sensual delights, and not even in knowledge and fame.
“No, but blest life is this,
With chaste and pure desire,
To turn unto the loadstar of all bliss,
On God the mind to rest,
Burnt up with sacred fire,
Possessing him, to be by him possesst.”
(ll. 61–66.)