“Their eyes on Him, whose graces manifold The more they doe behold, the more they would behold,” Fletcher says: “Their sight drinkes lovely fires in at their eyes, Their braine sweet incense with fine breath accloyes, That on God’s sweating altar burning lies; Their hungrie eares feede on the heav’nly noyse, That angels sing, to tell their untould joyes; Their understanding, naked truth; their wills The all, and selfe-sufficient Goodnesse, fills: That nothing here is wanting, but the want of ills.” (Stz. 34.) Here the progression in the scale of pleasures is from those of the senses to those of the mind. But Fletcher presents this union as even a more intimate experience of the soul. His is the most elaborate attempt in English poetry to describe the nature of the participation of the soul in the beauty of the ultimate reality, according to the Platonic notion of the participation of an object in its idea. After three stanzas descriptive of the state of absolute freedom from cares of life which reigns in heaven (stz. 35–37), Fletcher passes on to a description of God—the “Idea Beatificall,” as he names Him—in accordance with the Platonic notion of the highest principle, The One: “In midst of this citie cælestiall, Whear the Eternall Temple should have rose, Light’ned the Idea Beatificall: End, and beginning of each thing that growes; Whose selfe no end, nor yet beginning knowes; That hath no eyes to see, nor ears to heare; Yet sees, and heares, and is all-eye, all-eare; That nowhear is contain’d, and yet is every whear: “Changer of all things, yet immutable; Before and after all, the first and last; That, mooving all, is yet immoveable; Great without quantitie: in Whose forecast Things past are present, things to come are past; Swift without motion; to Whose open eye The hearts of wicked men unbrested lie; At once absent and present to them, farre, and nigh.” (Stz. 39–40.) He then goes on to explain what the Idea is not. It is nothing that can be known by sense. It is no flaming lustre, no harmony of sounds, no ambrosial feast for the appetite, no odor, no soft embrace, nor any sensual pleasure. And yet within the soul of the beholder it is known as an inward feast, a harmony, a light, a sound, a sweet perfume, and entire embrace. Thus he writes: “It is no flaming lustre, made of light; No sweet concent, as well-tim’d harmonie; Ambrosia, for to feast the appetite, Or flowrie odour, mixt with spicerie; No soft embrace, or pleasure bodily; And yet it is a kinde of inward feast, A harmony, that sounds within the brest, An odour, light, embrace, in which the soule doth rest.