“Then, hope, sustain thy self: though thou art hid Thou livest still, and must till she forbid; For when she would my vows and love reject, They would a Being in themselves project, Since infinites as they yet never did, Nor could conclude without some good effect.” (Stz. 16.) Platonic love, as such an example proves, was but synonymous with hopeless love. Platonic love, then, meant either a love devoid of all sensual desire, an innocent or hopeless passion, or it was a form of gallantry used to cloak immorality. Its one characteristic notion was that true love consisted in a union of soul with soul, mind with mind, or essence with essence. This idea of restricting love to the experience of soul as opposed to the enjoyment of sense is the one notion which runs beneath many of the love lyrics written in the seventeenth century; and it is the point attacked by opponents. In John Cleveland, “To Cloris, a Rapture,” and in Campion’s “Song”[20] the poets exhort their beloved to enjoy this high union of soul. In Carew’s “To My Mistress in Absence,” in Lovelace’s “To Lucasta. Going beyond the Seas,” and in Cowley’s “Friendship in Absence,” the triumph of love over time and space is explained by the mingling of souls in true love. In Sedley’s “The Platonick” and in Ayres’s “Platonic Love” are found examples of the hopelessness of the passion. In Aytoun’s “Platonic Love” which was taken by Suckling to form a poem—the “Song,” beginning, “If you refuse me once”—the lover modestly confesses that he cannot rise to the heights of such a pure passion, and requests a more easy way. In Cleveland’s “The Anti-Platonick” and “Platonick Love,” in Brome’s “Epithalamy,” in Cowley’s “Platonick Love” and “Answer to the Platonicks,” and in Cartwright’s “No Platonique Love,” the claims of the opponents are expressed in all the grossness of Restoration immorality.