Platonism in English poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
Plato · en
This state may well become this early age, but now
“passion is to woman’s love, about,
Nay, farther off, than when we first set out.
It is not love that sueth, or doth contend;
Love either conquers, or but meets a friend;
Man’s better part consists of purer fire,
And finds itself allow’d, ere it desire.”
(ll. 55–60.)
The reason for this lies in the fact that love begins in the soul, and
not in the sight.
“He much profanes whom valiant heats do move
To style his wandering rage of passion, Love.
Love that imparts in everything delight,
Is fancied in the soul, not in the sight.”
(ll. 125–128.)
In Jonson’s “Epode” in “The Forest,” the same differentiation of love
from passion is present, and an attempt is made to define love as an
essence. The love of the present is nothing but raging passion.
“The thing they here call Love, is blind desire,
Arm’d with bow, shafts, and fire;
Inconstant, like the sea, of whence ’tis born,
Rough, swelling, like a storm.”
True love, however, is an essence, a calmness, a peace.
“Now, true love
No such effects doth prove;
That is an essence far more gentle, fine,
Pure, perfect, nay divine;
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this bears no brands, nor darts,
To murder different hearts,
But in a calm, and godlike unity,
Preserves community.”
In Donne in his “Love’s Growth,” there is an expression of doubt whether
his love can be as pure as he thought it was, because it seems to suffer
an increase in the spring, and is not a thing without component
elements. But if love is no quintessence, he says, it must be mixed with
alien passions and thus not be pure. He silences his doubts, however, by
explaining after the analogy of concentric rings of waves of water about
the centre of disturbance how his love is one and unelemented.
“I scarce believe my love to be so pure
As I had thought it was,
Because it doth endure
Vicissitude, and season, as the grass;
Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore
My love was infinite, if spring make it more.
“But if this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow
With more, not only be no quintessence,
But mix’d of all stuffs, vexing soul, or sense,
And of the sun his active vigour borrow,
“Love’s not so pure, and abstract as they use
To say, which have no mistress but their Muse;
But as all else, being elemented too,
Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.
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