PART IV. PLATONIC POETS.

The largest inspiration of all western thought is nourished by the Academe. Not only idealism, but the provinces of philosophy and literature hostile to Plato are really indebted to him. The noble loftiness, the ethereal subtlety, the poetic beauty of that teaching has captivated most of the fine intellects of mediæval and modern times, and it is impossible to trace the invisible course of exalted thought which has radiated from this greatest Greek, the king of a nation of philosophers.

Adopting Emerson’s words, “Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated among men of thought. Great havoc makes he among our originalities. We have reached the mountain from which all these drift boulders were detached. The Bible of the learned for twenty-two centuries, every brisk young man who says fine things to each reluctant generation, is some reader of Plato translating into the vernacular his good things.... How many great men nature is incessantly sending up out of the night to be his men—Platonists! the Alexandrians, a constellation of genius; the Elizabethans, not less; Sir Thomas More, Henry More, John Hales, John Smith, Lord Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, Ralph Cudworth, Sydenham, Thomas Taylor. Calvinism is in his Phædro. Christianity is in it. Mahometanism draws all its philosophy, in its handbook of morals, the Akhlak-y-Jalaly, from him. Mysticism finds in Plato all its 179texts.” We know not how much of the world’s later poetry is due to the suggestion and nurture of the poet-philosopher. But in closing our studies of the poetry of reincarnation it may be of interest to group together the avowed Platonic poets.

Most illustrious of all the English disciples of this master, in the brilliant coterie of “Cambridge Platonists,” was Dr. Henry More, whom Dr. Johnson esteemed “one of our greatest divines and philosophers and no mean poet.” Hobbes said of him that if his own philosophy was not true he knew none that he should sooner adopt than Henry More’s of Cambridge; and Hoadley styles him “one of the first men of this or any other country.” Coleridge wrote that his philosophical works “contain more enlarged and elevated views of the Christian dispensation than I have met with in any other single volume; for More had both the philosophical and poetic genius supported by immense erudition.” He was a devout student of Plato. In the heat of rebellion he was spared by the fanatics. They pardoned his refusal to take their covenant and left him to continue the philosophic occupations which had rendered him famous as a lovable and absorbed scholar. He wove together in many poems a quaint texture of Gothic fancy and Greek thought. His “Psychozoia” or “Life of the Soul,” from which the following verses are taken, is a long Platonic poem tracing the course of the soul through ancient existences down into the earthly realm. Campbell said of this work that it “is like a curious grotto, whose labyrinths we might explore for its strange and mystic associations.” Dr. More was an intimate friend of Addison and long a correspondent of Descartes.

180From Henry More’s “Philosophical Poems” (“Psychozoia”).

I would sing the preëxistency

Of human souls and live once o’er again

By recollection and quick memory

All that is passed since first we all began.

But all too shallow be my wits to scan

So deep a point and mind too dull to climb

So dark a matter. But thou more than man

Aread, thou sacred soul of Plotin dear,

Tell me what mortals are. Tell what of old they were.

A spark or ray of divinity

Clouded with earthly fogs, and clad in clay,

A precious drop sunk from eternity

Spilt on the ground, or rather slunk away.

For then we fell when we ‘gan first t’ essay

By stealth of our own selves something to been

Uncentering ourselves from our one great stay,

Which rupture we new liberty did ween,

And from that prank right jolly wits ourselves did deem.

Show fitly how the preëxisting soul

Enacts and enters bodies here below

And then entire unhurt can leave this moul,

In which by sense and motion they may know

Better than we what things transacted be

Upon the earth, and when they best may show

Themselves to friend or foe, their phantasmy

Moulding their airy arc to gross consistency.

Milton imbibed from his college friend Henry More an early fondness for the study of Plato, whose philosophy nourished most of the fine spirits of that day, and he expresses the Greek sage’s opinion of the soul in his “Comus”:—

181The soul grows clotted by oblivion,

Imbodies and embrutes till she quite lose

The divine property of her first being;

Such as those thick and gloomy shadows damp

Oft seen in charnel vaults and sepulchres

Lingering and setting by a new made grave

As loth to leave the body that it loved.

Milton’s Platonic proclivities are also shown in his poem “On the Death of a Fair Infant”:—

Wert thou that just maid, who once before

Forsook the hated earth, O tell me sooth,

And cam’st again to visit us once more?

Or wert thou that sweet smiling youth?

Or any other of that heavenly brood

Let down in cloudy throne to do the world some good?

Or wert thou of the golden-winged host,

Who, having clad thyself in human weed,

To earth from thy prefixed seat didst post,

And after short abode fly back with speed

As if to show what creatures heaven doth breed;

Thereby to set the hearts of men on fire,

To scorn the sordid world and unto heaven aspire.

In the old library of poetry known as “Dodsley’s Collection,” is a Miltonic poem by an anonymous Platonist which is very interesting, and as it is difficult of access we quote the best part of it.

PREËXISTENCE. IN IMITATION OF MILTON.

Now had th’ archangel trumpet, raised sublime

Above the walls of heaven, begun to sound;

All æther took the blast and fell beneath

Shook with celestial noise; th’ almighty host,

182Hot with pursuit, and reeking with the blood

Of guilty cherubs smeared in sulphurous dust,

Pause at the known command of sounding gold.

At first they close the wide Tartarean gates,

Th’ impenetrable folds on brazen hinge

Roll creaking horrible; the din beneath

O’ercomes the war of flames, and deafens hell.

Then through the solid gloom with nimble wing

They cut their shining traces up to light;

Returned upon the edge of heavenly day,

Where thinnest beams play round the vast obscure

And with eternal gleam drives back the night.

They find the troops less stubborn, less involved

In crime and ruin, barr’d the realms of peace,

Yet uncondemned to baleful beats of woe,

Doubtful and suppliant; all the plumes of light

Moult from their shuddering wings, and sickly fear

Shades every face with horror; conscious guilt

Rolls in the livid eyeball, and each breast

Shakes with the dread of future doom unknown.

’Tis here the wide circumference of heaven

Opens in two vast gates, that inward turn

Voluminous, on jasper columns hung

By geometry divine: they ever glow

With living sculptures; they arise by turns

To imboss the shining leaves, by turns they set

To give succeeding argument their place;

In holy hieroglyphics on they move,

The gaze of journeying angels, as they pass

Oft looking back, and held in deep surprise.

Here stood the troops distinct; the cherub guard

Unbarred the splendid gates, and in they roll

Harmonious; for a vocal spirit sits

Within each hinge, and as they onward drive,

In just divisions breaks the numerous jars

With symphony melodious, such as spheres

Involved in tenfold wreaths are said to sound.

183Out flows a blaze of glory: for on high

Towering advanced the moving throne of God.

· · · · ·

Above the throne, th’ ideas heavenly bright

Of past, of present, and of coming time,

Fixed their immoved abode, and there present

An endless landscape of created things

To sight celestial, where angelic eyes

Are lost in prospect; for the shiny range

Boundless and various in its bosom bears

Millions of full proportioned worlds, beheld

With steadfast eyes, till more arise to view,

And further inward scenes start up unknown.

· · · · ·

A vocal thunder rolled the voice of God.

“Servants of God! and virtues great in arms,

We approve your faithful works, and you return

Blessed from the dire pursuits of rebel foes;

Resolved, obdurant, they have tried the force

Of this right hand, and known almighty power;

Transfixed with lightning, down they sunk and fell

Into the fiery gulf, and deep they plunge

Below the burning waves, to hide their heads.

· · · · ·

“For you, ye guilty throng that lately joined

In this sedition, since seduced from good,

And caught in trains of guile, by sprites malign

Superior in their order; you accept,

Trembling, my heavenly clemency and grace.

When the long era once has filled its orb,

You shall emerge to light and humbly here

Again shall bow before his favoring throne,

If your own virtue second my decree:

But all must have their races first below.

See, where below in chaos wondrous deep

A speck of light dawns forth, and thence throughout

The shades, in many a wreath, my forming power

184There swiftly turns the burning eddy round,

Absorbing all crude matter near its brink;

Which next, with subtle motions, takes the form

I please to stamp, the seed of embryo worlds

All now in embryo, but ere long shall rise

Variously scattered in this vast expanse,

Involved in winding orbs, until the brims

Of outward circles brush the heavenly gates.

The middle point a globe of curling fire

Shall hold, which round it sheds its genial heat;

Where’er I kindle life the motion grows,

In all the endless orbs, from this machine;

And infinite vicissitudes that roll

About the restless centre; for I rear

In those meanders turned, a dusty ball,

Deformed all o’er with woods, whose shaggy tops

Inclose eternal mists, and deadly damps

Hover within their boughs, to cloak the light;

Impervious scenes of horror, till reformed

To fields and grassy dells and flowery meads

By your continual pains.... Here Silence sits

In folds of wreathy mantling sunk obscure,

And in dark fumes bending his drowsy head;

An urn he holds, from whence a lake proceeds

Wide, flowing gently, smooth and Lethe named;

Hither compelled, each soul must drink long draughts

Of those forgetful streams, till forms within

And all the great ideas fade and die:

For if vast thought should play about a mind

Inclosed in flesh, and dragging cumbrous life,

Fluttering and beating in the mournful cage,

It soon would break its gates and wing away:

’Tis therefore my decree, the soul return

Naked from off this beach, and perfect blank

To visit the new world; and wait to feel

Itself in crude consistence closely shut,

The dreadful monument of just revenge;

185Immured by heaven’s own hand, and placed erect

On fleeting matter all imprisoned round

With walls of clay; the ethereal mould shall bear

The chain of members, deafened with an ear,

Blinded by eyes, and trammeled by hands.

Here anger, vast ambition and disdain,

And all the haughty movements rise and fall,

As storms of neighboring atoms tear the soul,

And hope and love and all the calmer turns

Of easy hours, in their gay gilded shapes,

With sudden run, skim o’er deluded minds,

As matter leads the dance; but one desire

Unsatisfied, shall mar ten thousand joys.

“The rank of beings, that shall first advance,

Drink deep of human life, and long shall stay

On this great scene of cares. From all the rest,

That longer for the destined body wait,

Less penance I expect, and short abode

In those pale dreamy kingdoms will content;

Each has his lamentable lot, and all

On different rocks abide the pains of life.

“The pensive spirit takes the lonely grove;

Nightly he visits all the sylvan scenes,

Where far remote, a melancholy moon

Raising her head, serene and shorn of beams,

Throws here and there her glimmerings through the trees.

The sage shall haunt this solitary ground

And view the dismal landscape limned within

In horrid shades, mixed with imperfect light.

Here Judgment, blinded by delusive sense,

Contracted through the cranny of an eye,

Shoots up faint languid beams to that dark seat,

Wherein the soul, bereaved of native fire,

Sets intricate, in misty clouds obscured.

· · · · ·

“Hence far removed, a different being race

186In cities full and frequent take their seat,

Where honor’s crushed, and gratitude oppressed

With swelling hopes of gain, that raise within

A tempest, and driven onward by success,

Can find no bounds. For creatures of a day

Stretch their wide cares to ages; full increase

Starves their penurious soul, while empty sound

Fills the ambitious; that shall ever shrink,

Pining with endless cares, while this shall swell

To tympany enormous. Bright in arms

Here shines the hero, out he fiercely leads

A martial throng, his instruments of rage,

To fill the world with death, and thin mankind.

· · · · ·

“There savage nature in one common lies

And feels its share of hunger, care, and pain,

Cheated by flying prey; and now they tear

Their panting flesh; and deeply, darkly quaff

Of human woe, even when they rudely sip

The flowing stream, or draw the savory pulp

Of nature’s freshest viands; fragrant fruits

Enjoyed with trembling, and in danger sought.

“But where the appointed limits of a law

Fences the general safety of the world,

No greater quiet reigns: the blended loads

Of punishment and crime deform the world,

And give no rest to man; with pangs and throes

He enters on the stage; prophetic tears

And infant cries prelude his future woes;

And all is one continual scene of gulf

Till the sad sable curtain falls in death.

· · · · ·

“Then the gay glories of the living world

Shall cast their empty varnish and retire

Out of his feeble views; the shapeless root

Of wild imagination dance and play

Before his eyes obscure; till all in death

187Shall vanish, and the prisoner enlarged,

Regains the flaming borders of the sky.”

He ended. Peals of thunder rend the heavens,

And chaos, from the bottom turned, resounds.

The mighty clangor; all the heavenly host

Approve the high decree, and loud they sing

Eternal justice; while the guilty troops,

Sad with their doom, but sad without despair,

Fall fluttering down to Lethe’s lake, and there

For penance, and the destined body wait.

Shelley’s Platonic leanings are well known.^[29] The favorite Greek conceit of preëxistence in many earlier lives may frequently be found in his poems. The title over one of his songs of unrest, “The World’s Wanderer,” evidently alludes to himself, as do the lines in it

“Like the world’s rejected guest.”

The song of the spirits in “Prometheus Unbound” pictures vividly the human soul’s descent into the gloom of the material world:—

To the deep, to the deep,

Down, down!

Through the shade of sleep,

Through the cloudy strife

Of Death and of Life,

Through the veil and the bar

Of things which seem and are,

Even to the steps of the remotest throne,

Down, down!

While the sound whirls around,

Down, down!

As the fawn draws the hound,

188As the lightning the vapor,

As a weak moth, the taper;

Death, despair; love, sorrow;

Time both; to-day, to-morrow;

As steel obeys the spirit of the stone,

Down, down!

In the depth of the deep,

Down, down!

Like the veiled lightning asleep,

Like the spark nursed in embers,

The last look Love remembers,

Like a diamond which shines

On the dark wealth of mines,

A spell is treasured but for thee alone,

Down, down!

The last stanza of “The Cloud” is Shelley’s Platonic symbol of human life:—

I am the daughter of earth and water

And the nursling of the sky,

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores,

I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain when with never a stain

The pavilion of heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams

Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

I arise and unbuild it again.

Another poem, entitled “A Fragment,” certainly refers to preëxistence:—

Ye gentle visitants of calm thought,

Moods like the memories of happier earth

Which come arrayed in thoughts of little worth

Like stars in clouds by weak winds enwrought.

189

THE RETREAT.

BY HENRY VAUGHAN.

Happy those early days when I

Shined in my angel-infancy,

Before I understood this place

Appointed for my second race,

Or taught my soul to fancy aught

But a white celestial thought;

When yet I had not walked above

A mile or two from my first love,

And, looking back, at that short space,

Could see a glimpse of his bright face;

When on some gilded cloud or flower

My gazing soul would dwell an hour,

And in those weaker glories spy

Some shadows of eternity;

Before I taught my tongue to wound

My conscience with a sinful sound;

Or had the black art to dispense

A several sin to every sense,

But felt through all this flashy dress

Bright shoots of everlastingness.

Oh, how I long to travel back

And tread again that ancient track!

That I might once more reach that plain

Where first I left my glorious train;

From whence the enlightened spirit sees

That shady city of palm-trees.

But ah! my soul with too much stay

Is drunk and staggers in the way.

Some men a forward motion love,

But I by backward steps would move,

And when this dust falls to the urn,

In that state I came, return.

190In Emerson, the Plato of the nineteenth century, the whole feeling of the Greek seems reflected in its most glorious development. Many of his poems clearly suggest the influence of his Greek teacher, as his “Threnody” upon the death of his young son, and “The Sphinx” in which these two stanzas appear:—

To vision profounder

Man’s spirit must dive;

His aye-rolling orb

At no goal will arrive;

The heavens that now draw him

With sweetness untold,

Once found for new heavens

He spurneth the old.

Eterne alteration

Now follows, now flies,

And under pain, pleasure—

Under pleasure, pain lies.

Love works at the centre,

Heart-heaving alway;

Forth speed the strong pulses

To the borders of day.

Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe, the friend of Bishop Ken and of Dr. Isaac Watts, has left this allusion to preëxistence in

A HYMN ON HEAVEN.

Ye starry mansions, hail! my native skies!

Here in my happy, preëxistent state

(A spotless mind) I led the life of Gods,

But passing, I salute you, and advance

To yonder brighter realms, allowed access.

Hail, splendid city of the almighty king,

Celestial salem, situate above, etc.

191Some of the common church hymns glow with the enthusiasm of Platonic preëxistence, and are fondly sung by Christians without any thought that, while their idea is of Biblical origin, it has been nourished and perpetuated by the Greek sage, and directly implies reincarnation. For instance:—

“I’m but a stranger, here, heaven is my home.

Heaven is my fatherland, heaven is my home.”

“My Ain Countrie.”

“This world where grief and sin abideth,

Is not the Christian’s native clime.”

“The home-land, blessed home-land.”

“Jerusalem, my happy home.”

193