This made him long for home, as loth to stay With murmurers and foes; He sigh’d for Eden, and would often say ‘Ah! what bright days were those!’ Nor was heav’n cold unto him: for each day The valley or the mountain Afforded visits, and still Paradise lay In some green shade or fountain. Angels lay leiger here: each bush, and cell, Each oak, and highway knew them; Walk but the fields, or sit down at some well, And he was sure to view them.” In this poem, although there is no such parallelism with the account of a preëxistent state as it is given in Plato, the fundamental idea is the same as that of “The Retreat.” Vaughan describes man’s life in Eden as one of closer intimacy with his celestial home than his lot on earth affords him, just as he had described the experience of his own “angel-infancy” and its contrast to his earthly life. In both poems is present the conviction that the human soul once lived in a state of pure innocence; and in both is heard the note of regret at the loss of this through sin. In Vaughan’s poem, “The World,” the influence of Plato’s account of the preëxistent life of the soul is felt only in affording the character of the imagery which Vaughan has used to express his idea. In the “Phædrus” Plato describes the progress of the soul in its sight of the eternal ideas in the heaven of heavens. Each soul, represented as a charioteer guiding a pair of winged horses, is carried about by the revolution of the spheres, and during the progress it beholds the ideas. The souls of the gods have no difficulty in seeing these realities; “but of the other souls,” says Plato, “that which follows God best and is likest to him lifts the head of the charioteer into the outer world, and is carried round in the revolution, troubled indeed by the steeds, and with difficulty beholding true being; while another only rises and falls, and sees, and again fails to see by reason of the unruliness of the steeds. The rest of the souls are also longing after the upper world, and they all follow, but not being strong enough they are carried round below the surface, plunging, treading on one another, each striving to be first; and there is confusion and perspiration and the extremity of effort; and many of them are lamed, or have their wings broken, through the ill-driving of the charioteers.” (“Phædrus,” 248.)