THEORY OF LOVE
I. HEAVENLY LOVE
Heavenly love, as conceived in the poetry of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, refers to two distinct experiences. By this term
the poets meant either the love known in the soul for the realities of
the unseen world or the love which God had shown to man in his creation
and preservation, and which man could experience through the indwelling
of God’s spirit within him. In the explanation of the nature of these
two experiences the teaching of Platonism played a very important part,
directing the course of that love of man for heavenly things, and
accounting for the presence of love in the Godhead.
To the discussion of the latter of these subjects Platonism was able to
offer two conceptions, in which a rational explanation of God’s love as
revealed in the creation could be found; one presenting the highest
reality as beauty, the other as the good. The first conception was
present in its theory of love. In the “Symposium” Plato had taught that
love was a desire of birth in beauty, and that the highest love was a
desire of birth in beauty absolute, the ultimate principle of all
beauty. (“Symposium,” 206, 211–212.) Christianity, on the other hand,
had taught that God is love. By identifying the absolute beauty of Plato
with God, and by applying the Platonic conception of the birth of love
to this Christian conception of God as love, God Himself was understood
as enjoying his own beauty, thus begetting beings like to it in
fairness. In Spenser’s “Hymne of Heavenly Love,” this idea forms the
first division of the poem which treats of the love of God. (ll.
25–122.) At first God is conceived as living in Himself in love.
“Before this worlds great frame, in which al things
Are now containd, found any being place,
Ere flitting Time could wag his eyas wings
About that mightie bound, which doth embrace
The rolling Spheres, and parts their houres by space,
That high eternall powre, which now doth move
In all these things, mov’d in it selfe by love.”
(ll. 25–31.)
Loving itself, this Power brought forth, first the Son.
“It lov’d it selfe, because it selfe was faire;
(For faire is lov’d;) and of it selfe begot
Like to it selfe his eldest sonne and heire,
Eternall, pure, and voide of sinfull blot.”
(ll. 32–35.)
After the creation of the Son God begets the angels in His beauty.
“Yet being pregnant still with powrefull grace,
And full of fruitfull love, that loves to get
Things like himselfe, and to enlarge his race,
His second brood though not in powre so great,
Yet full of beautie, next he did beget
An infinite increase of Angels bright,
All glistring glorious in their Makers light.”
(ll. 53–59.)
After the fall of the angels God finally creates man.
“Such he him made, that he resemble might
Himselfe, as mortall thing immortall could;
Him to be Lord of every living wight,
He made by love out of his owne like mould,
In whom he might his mightie selfe behould:
For love doth love the thing belov’d to see,
That like it selfe in lovely shape may bee.”
(ll. 116–122.)
The second conception of the highest reality as the good is used in a
more general way to explain the reason of creation. In the “Timæus” the
Maker of the universe is conceived as creating the world in goodness.
“Let me tell you,” says Timæus, “why the creator made this world of
generation. He was good, and the good can never have any jealousy of
anything. And being free from jealousy, he desired that all things
should be as like himself as they could be.” (“Timæus,” 29.) In Henry
More the idea is expressed in the closing canto of his “Psychathanasia,”
where he is accounting for the creation. (III. 4.) He has words of
bitter denunciation for those who teach that God created the world
merely as a manifestation of His power, His will. (III. iv. 22.) He
maintains the Platonic teaching.
“When nothing can to Gods own self accrew,
Who’s infinitely happy; sure the end
Of this creation simply was to shew
His flowing goodnesse, which he doth out send
Not for himself; for nought can him amend;
But to his creature doth his good impart,
This infinite _Good_ through all the world doth wend
To fill with heavenly blisse each willing heart.
So the free Sunne doth ’light and ’liven every part.”
(III. iv. 16.)
So closely allied in the English poets are the teachings of Platonism
with the devotional spirit of Christian love that in the same man and
even in the same experience the thought can pass most naturally from a
conception of Christ’s love for God, as absolute beauty, to a subjective
treatment of it as a personal experience. Thus in George Herbert’s
lyric, “Love,” the invocation is to the love of Christ for God springing
from His imperishable beauty; but in the second division of the poem
this love has become a refining fire that can burn all lusts within the
soul and enable it to see Him.
“Immortall Love, author of this great frame,
Sprung from that beauty which can never fade,
How hath man parcel’d out Thy glorious name,
And thrown it in that dust which Thou hast made.
· · · · ·
“Immortall Heat, O let Thy greater flame
Attract the lesser to it; let those fires
Which shall consume the world first make it tame,
And kindle in our hearts such true desires
As may consume our lusts, and make Thee way:
Then shall our hearts pant Thee, then shall our brain
All her invention on Thine altar lay,
And there in hymnes send back Thy fire again.
“Our eies shall see Thee, which before saw dust—
Dust blown by Wit, till that they both were blinde:
Thou shalt recover all Thy goods in kinde,
Who wert disseizèd by usurping lust.”
The earlier conception of heavenly love, as related to absolute beauty,
is not, however, the more important of the two themes of this poetry.
From the very nature of the love itself, although it could be described
in accordance with certain Platonic conceptions, it could not be the
subject of a personal treatment; it gave no sufficient outlet for the
passion of love. This was afforded only by that heavenly love which is
the love of man for the unseen realities of the spiritual world. The
full treatment which this latter subject receives in English poetry
testifies to the strong hold which the teachings of Platonism had upon
religious experience in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Platonism afforded not only the philosophic basis for the object of this
passion, but it also acted as a corrective tendency in checking the
influence of an alien idea, erotic mysticism.
Heavenly love, understood as a love known in the soul for a spiritual,
or as it was then called, heavenly beauty, sprang out of the treatment
to which Plato had subjected love in the “Symposium.” In English it
appears in two separate forms, although in both it consists in gaining a
correct idea of the relation of the beauty known to the senses as
compared with that known by the soul. The only difference in the two
expressions is that the object of the passion is variously described.
In Spenser’s “Hymne of Heavenly Beautie” occurs the first form of this
love. The heavenly beauty celebrated in this “Hymne” is the Platonic
wisdom, Sapience, as Spenser calls it, the same high reality with which
he had identified Una. (l. 186.) The subject of the love in the “Hymne”
is formally presented as God, who is described as
“that Highest farre beyond all telling,
Fairer then all the rest which there appeare,
Though all their beauties joynd together were:
How then can mortall tongue hope to expresse,
The image of such endlesse perfectnesse?”
(ll. 104–108.)
Yet the real subject is the praise of Sapience, to which somewhat more
than one-third of the “Hymne” is devoted. A description of her
transcendent beauty and her power to fill the soul of the beholder with
true insight into the relative beauty of this world of sense and that of
spirit is the climax of the poem. Among all the attributes of God
mentioned, His truth, His love, His grace, His mercy, His might, His
judgment (ll. 113–115), the greatest is Sapience, who is described as
sitting in the very bosom of the Almighty. (l. 187.) The fairness of her
face, he says, none can tell; no painter or poet can adequately describe
her; his own powers are so weak that he can only admire, not presuming
to picture her. (ll. 207–241.) So completely, however, does she occupy
the field of spiritual vision in the happy mortals that behold her, that
“Ne from thenceforth doth any fleshly sense,
Or idle thought of earthly things remaine,
But all that earst seemd sweet, seemes now offense,
And all that pleased earst, now seemes to paine,
Their joy, their comfort, their desire, their gaine,
Is fixed all on that which now they see,
All other sights but fayned shadowes bee.
“And that faire lampe, which useth to enflame
The hearts of men with selfe consuming fyre,
Thenceforth seemes fowle, and full of sinfull blame;
And all that pompe, to which proud minds aspyre
By name of honor, and so much desyre,
Seemes to them basenesse, and all riches drosse,
And all mirth sadnesse, and all lucre losse.
“So full their eyes are of that glorious sight,
And senses fraught with such satietie,
That in nought else on earth they can delight,
But in th’ aspect of that felicitie,
Which they have written in their inward ey;
On which they feed, and in their fastened mynd
All happie joy and full contentment fynd.”
(ll. 270–290.)
According to Spenser, then, heavenly love is the love felt in the soul
when the sight of wisdom in her beauty dawns upon the inner vision. It
is a love gained through speculation; and though the object is conceived
of as yonder in heaven, it is still the beauty which is seen here in the
mind. (l. 17.) Instead of the poetical device of the Mount of Heavenly
Contemplation used in the “Faerie Queene” to signify the refinement of
the spiritual vision necessary to the sight of this heavenly wisdom,
Spenser has been able to explain in detail the way along which the soul
must travel to gain its goal. It is the dialectic of the “Symposium”
(211), the progress through ever ascending gradations of beauty up to
the first absolute beauty changed only in the externals as required by
the Christian conception of the heavenly hierarchy. But throughout the
long series of upward stages through which his mind passes, one may feel
the quickening of his spirit at the thought of the highest beauty, in
which lies the unity of the poem. In the contemplation of this heavenly
beauty the poem begins and ends.
“Rapt with the rage of mine own ravisht thought,
Through contemplation of those goodly sights,
And glorious images in heaven wrought,
Whose wondrous beauty breathing sweet delights,
Do kindle love in high conceipted sprights:
I faine to tell the things that I behold,
But feele my wits to faile, and tongue to fold.”
(ll. 4–10.)
“And looke at last up to that soveraine light,
From whose pure beams al perfect beauty springs,
That kindleth love in every godly spright,
Even the love of God, which loathing brings
Of this vile world, and these gay seeming things;
With whose sweete pleasures being so possest,
Thy straying thoughts henceforth for ever rest.”
(ll. 298–304.)
The second form which the doctrine of heavenly love assumed in English
is found in William Drummond’s “Song II—It autumn was, and on our
hemisphere.” The conception of heavenly beauty is not the ethical notion
of Spenser’s “Hymne,” but a less stimulating idea of the beauty of an
intelligible world of which this world is but a copy. The attraction in
this idea lay in its appeal to Drummond’s peculiar imagination,
delighting, as it did, in the sight of vastness. The poem is an
exhortation to the lover, who is Drummond himself, to cease his mourning
for his dead love, and to raise his mind to a love of heaven and of the
beauty of God there to be seen. The two ideas which Platonism
contributed are the notion of an intelligible world above this world of
sense, and of an absolute beauty of which all beauty on earth is but a
shadow.
The conception of a world above this world was suggested by Plato in his
“Phædo” and explained by Plotinus in his Enneads (VI. vii. 12) as a pure
intelligible world. “For since,” says Plotinus, “we say that this All
[the universe] is framed after the Yonder, as after a pattern, the All
must first exist yonder as a living entity, an animal; and since its
idea is complete, everything must exist yonder. Heaven, therefore, must
exist there as an animal, not without what here we call its stars, and
this is the idea of heaven. Yonder, too, of course, must be the Earth,
not bare, but far more richly furnished with life; in it are all
creatures that move on dry land and plants rooted in life. Sea, too, is
yonder, and all water ebbing and flowing in abiding life; and all
creatures that inhabit the water, and all the tribes of the air are part
of the all yonder, and all aerial beings, for the same reason as Air
itself.” In the “Phædo” (110–111), Plato lends color to his account by
calling attention to the fairness of the place and to the pleasantness
of life there. Drummond has seized upon this idea of an immaterial world
where all is fair and happy, and interprets it as the heaven whither the
young woman who has died is urging him to direct his love. Thus in her
addresses to Drummond she speaks of the character of the world where she
lives.
“Above this vast and admirable frame,
This temple visible, which World we name,
· · · · ·
There is a world, a world of perfect bliss,
Pure, immaterial, bright, ...
· · · · ·
A world, where all is found, that here is found,
But further discrepant than heaven and ground.
It hath an earth, as hath this world of yours,
With creatures peopled, stor’d with trees and flow’rs;
It hath a sea, ...
It hath pure fire, it hath delicious air,
Moon, sun, and stars, heavens wonderfully fair:
But there flowr’s do not fade, trees grow not old,
The creatures do not die through heat nor cold.”
(ll. 111–136.)
It is to this world that she urges him to raise his mind, for all that
earth has to offer is a vain shadow.
“But thou who vulgar footsteps dost not trace,
Learn to raise up thy mind unto this place,
And what earth-creeping mortals most affect,
If not at all to scorn, yet to neglect:
O chase not shadows vain, which when obtain’d,
Were better lost, than with such travail gain’d.”
(ll. 181–186.)
These shadows are worldly honor and fame.
At this point the poem naturally passes on to develop the second
suggestion found in Platonism, that the beauty of earth is but a shadow
or reflexion of the absolute beauty. As was common in that time, this
absolute beauty is identified with God. Accordingly, the young woman
appeals to Drummond to trust in God’s beauty, which alone can fill the
soul with bliss. If the power of earthly beauty—the glance of an eye—can
make him leave all else, what, she asks, must be the love kindled by the
“only Fair”; for though the wonders of earth, of sea, and heaven are
beautiful, they are but shadows of Him.
“O leave that love which reachest but to dust,
And in that love eternal only trust,
And beauty, which, when once it is possest,
Can only fill the soul, and make it blest.
Pale envy, jealous emulations, fears,
Sighs, plaints, remorse, here have no place, nor tears;
False joys, vain hopes, here be not, hate nor wrath;
What ends all love, here most augments it, death.
If such force had the dim glance of an eye,
Which some few days thereafter was to die,
That it could make thee leave all other things,
And like the taper-fly there burn thy wings;
· · · · ·
If once thou on that only Fair couldst gaze,
What flames of love would he within thee raise!
· · · · ·
“Those golden letters which so brightly shine
In heaven’s great volume gorgeously divine;
The wonders all in sea, in earth, in air,
Be but dark pictures of that sovereign Fair;
Be tongues, which still thus cry unto your ear,
(Could ye amidst world’s cataracts them hear,)
From fading things, fond wights, lift your desire,
And in our beauty, his, us made, admire:
If we seem fair, O think how fair is he
Of whose fair fairness shadows, steps, we be.
No shadow can compare it with the face,
No step with that dear foot which did it trace.”
(ll. 197–234.)
This “Song,” then, though drawing on a different phase of Platonism—its
more philosophic and fanciful side,[6] not its deep ethical
truth—follows the same order of thought as Spenser’s “Hymne,” and like
that presents heavenly love as a love known in the soul and growing out
of a correct notion of the relative values of the visible beauty of the
senses and the invisible beauty of mind.
In Drummond heavenly love is a progression out of the romantic love of
woman. It is not explicitly so stated in the “Song,” but in a sonnet,
the subject of which refers to the young woman of the longer poem, he
writes:
“Sith it hath pleas’d that First and only Fair
To take that beauty to himself again,
Which in this world of sense not to remain,
But to amaze, was sent, and home repair;
The love which to that beauty I did bear
(Made pure of mortal spots which did it stain,
And endless, which even death cannot impair),
I place on Him who will it not disdain.”
(Poems, Second Pt. S. xiii.)
This is a note heard in other poets where heavenly love is described as
naturally growing out of earthly love when the right idea of the nature
of the object of that lower passion has been learned. Thus in Milton it
is taught that the love of woman must not be passion, but must be a
scale by which the mind may mount to the heavenly world. The passion
which Adam feels for the loveliness that hedges the presence of Eve—
“when I approach
Her loveliness, so absolute she seems
And in herself complete, so well to know
Her own, that what she wills to do or say
Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best:
· · · · ·
and, to consummate all,
Greatness of mind and nobleness their seat
Build in her loveliest, and create an awe
About her, as a guard angelic placed—”
(VIII. 546–559.)
is described by Raphael “with contracted brow” as merely transported
touch, in reality the same feeling shared by the beasts of the field.
(VIII. 582.) Raphael, accordingly, directs Adam to love only the
rational in Eve’s nature, for true love has his seat in the reason.
“What higher in her society thou find’st
Attractive, human, rational, love still:
In loving thou dost well, in passion not,
Wherein true Love consists not. Love refines
The thoughts, and heart enlarges—hath his seat
In Reason, and is judicious, is the scale
By which to Heavenly Love thou may’st ascend,
Not sunk in carnal pleasure.”
(VIII. 586–594.)
In Phineas Fletcher’s sixth “Piscatorie Eclogue,” where there is a long
discussion on the nature of love, human love is shown to be a love
merely of the passing charms of woman: of her form, which will decay; of
her voice, which is but empty wind; and of her color, which can move
only the sense. (Stz. 20–22.) No attempt is made to describe the nature
of the higher love, but a simple exhortation to raise this love of woman
to a love of the “God of fishers” closes the account.
“Then let thy love mount from these baser things,
And to the Highest Love and worth aspire:
Love’s born of fire, fitted with mounting wings;
That at his highest he might winde him higher;
Base love, that to base earth so basely clings!
· · · · ·
“Raise then thy prostrate love with tow’ring thought;
And clog it not in chains and prison here:
The God of fishers, deare thy love hath bought:
Most deare He loves; for shame, love thou as deare.”
(Stz. 24, 25.)
Heavenly love, then, whether springing from the desire within the soul
to see wisdom in her beauty, or from a desire to raise the mind from a
love of earth to the intelligible world, or from the desire to find a
worthy object in the love of the rational in woman, when freed from all
the grossness of physical passion, is a contemplative love of a less
perishing beauty than can be found on earth. And just as the transition
was easy from the love which God himself knows to the soul’s love of
God, so was the change from the love of soul for a higher reality than
earthly beauty to the immortal love of God for the soul. Thus in
Sidney’s sonnet the subtle change is effected.
“Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust,
And thou my mind aspire to higher things:
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:
Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.
Draw in thy beames, and humble all thy might,
To that sweet yoke, where lasting freedomes be:
Which breakes the clowdes and opens forth the light,
That doth both shine and give us sight to see.
O take fast hold, let that light be thy guide,
In this small course which birth drawes out to death,
And thinke how evill becommeth him to slide,
Who seeketh heav’n, and comes of heav’nly breath.
Then farewell world, thy uttermost I see,
Eternall Love maintaine thy life in me.”
(S. cx.)
The appeal which Platonism made to the English poets in its doctrine of
a heavenly love was through its power to stir the minds with a deep
sense of that beauty which God was understood to possess. The
application of the principle of beauty to God resulted in a note of joy
and in an exaltation of soul in the religious mind, which, after
forsaking the beauty of this world of sense, could enjoy the great
principle of beauty in the beatific vision of God. Such a strain of joy
may be heard in Drummond, in John Norris, and even in the quiet lyrics
of George Herbert.
The sight of God in His absolute beauty is considered by these poets as
the end of the soul’s endeavor. According to John Norris God is the
divine excellence,
“Which pleases either _mind_ or _sense_,
Tho’ thee by different names we call!
Search Nature through, there still wilt be
The _Sum_ of all that’s good in her _Variety_.”
He thus exhorts the soul to rise to a sight of Him.
“But do not thou, my Soul, fixt here remain,
All streams of Beauty here below
Do from that immense Ocean flow,
And thither they should lead _again_.
Trace then these Streams, till thou shalt be
At length _o’erwhelm’d_ in Beauty’s _boundless Sea_.”
(“Beauty,” stz. 4, 10.)
According to Drummond, the one “choicest bliss” of life is the
possession of God’s beauty as a burning passion within the soul. In “An
Hymn of True Happiness” he teaches that supreme felicity does not
consist in the enjoyment of earth’s treasures, of sensuous beauty, or of
other sensual delights, and not even in knowledge and fame.
“No, but blest life is this,
With chaste and pure desire,
To turn unto the loadstar of all bliss,
On God the mind to rest,
Burnt up with sacred fire,
Possessing him, to be by him possesst.”
(ll. 61–66.)
“A love which, while it burns
The soul with fairest beams,
In that uncreated sun the soul it turns,
And makes such beauty prove,
That, if sense saw her gleams,
All lookers-on would pine and die for love.”
(ll. 97–102.)
The essential nature of this beatific vision is described either as a
sense of eternal rest or of eternal joy. In Norris’s “Prospect,” the
soul is preparing for the great change that will come when it is free
from the body; and its greatest change is described as a sight of “the
only Fair.”
“Now for the greatest Change prepare,
To see the only Great, the only Fair,
Vail now thy feeble eyes, gaze and be blest;
Here all thy Turns and Revolutions cease,
Here’s all Serenity and Peace:
Thou’rt to the _Center_ come, the native seat of _rest_.
Here’s now no further change nor need there be;
When _One_ shall be _Variety_.”
(Stz. 5.)
In Drummond’s “Teares on the Death of Mœliades” the joy of the departed
soul is repeatedly emphasized as a rest in the enjoyment of God’s
beauty. Thus, in closing, the dead is addressed:
“Rest, blessed spright, rest satiate with the sight
Of him whose beams doth dazzle and delight,
Life of all lives, cause of each other cause,
The sphere and centre where the mind doth pause;
Narcissus of himself, himself the well,
Lover, and beauty, that doth all excel.
Rest, happy ghost, and wonder in that glass
Where seen is all that shall be, is, or was,
While shall be, is, or was do pass away,
And nought remain but an eternal day:
For ever rest.”
(ll. 179–188.)
The note of joy in the beatific vision is heard in Drummond and Norris.
In Drummond earthly love is a care, a war within our nature; but love
“Among those sprights above
Which see their Maker’s face,
It a contentment is, a quiet peace,
A pleasure void of grief, a constant rest,
Eternal joy which nothing can molest.”
(“Urania,” Madrigal 2.)
And again:
“O blest abode! O happy dwelling-place
Where visibly th’ Invisible doth reign!
Blest people, who do see true beauty’s face,
With whose dark shadows he but earth doth deign,
All joy is but annoy, all concord strife,
Match’d with your endlesse bliss and happy life.”
(“Urania,” S. v.)
In Norris’s “Seraphick Love” a more violent strain is detected. He has
forsaken the beauty of earth because he has seen a fairer beauty in
contemplation, and to this source of all good and beauty he thus
addresses the close of his poem.
“To thee, thou _only Fair_, my Soul aspires
With _Holy Breathings_, _languishing_ Desires
To thee _m’ inamour’d_, panting Heart does move,
By Efforts of _Ecstatic_ Love.
How do thy glorious streams of Light
Refresh my intellectual sight!
Tho broken, and strain’d through a Skreen
Of envious Flesh that stands between!
When shall m’ imprison’d Soul be free,
That she thy Native Uncorrected Light may see,
And gaze upon thy _Beatifick_ Face to all Eternity?”
(Stz. 4.)
The violence of passion in these poets is absent in George Herbert, and
even the presence of the beatific vision, as a conscious experience of
the soul known after the long travail of its search for beauty, is not
in the least discernible. Still, the conviction that there is a higher
beauty than that seen on earth, and that in truth lies this beauty, is
felt beneath the mildness of Herbert’s devotion. In two sonnets, which
he sent to his mother in 1608, he laments the decay of any true love for
God among the poets, and contrasts the beauty of God with the beauties
of the amorists. To him the beauty of God lies in the discovery.
“Such poor invention burns in their [the amorists’] low minde,
Whose fire is wild, and doth not upward go
To praise, and on Thee, Lord, some ink bestow.
Open the bones, and you shall nothing finde
In the best face but filth; when, Lord, in Thee
The beauty lies in the discoverie.”
(S. i.)
He is, accordingly, content to sing the praises of God.
“Let foolish lovers, if they will love dung,
With canvas, not with arras, clothe their shame;
Let Follie speak in her own native tongue:
True Beautie dwells on high; ours in a flame
But borrow’d thence to light us thither;
Beautie and beauteous words should go together.”
(“The Forerunners,” ll. 25–30.)
So intimately has this notion of the spiritual nature of true beauty
blended with the simple experience of his devotional life that he can
ask
“Is there in truth no beautie?
Is all good structure in a winding-stair?
May no lines passe, except they do their dutie
Not to a true, but painted chair?
· · · · ·
Must purling streams refresh a lover’s loves?
Must all be vail’d while he that reades divines,
Catching the sense at two removes?”[7]
As for himself, he says:
“I envie no man’s nightingale or spring;
Nor let them punish me with loss of rhyme,
Who plainly say, My God, my King.”
(“Jordan.”)
In that truth he found his beauty.
Platonism, then, came as a direct appeal to the religious mind of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which was so constituted that the
element of philosophic revery was blended most naturally with a strain
of pure devotional love. Although the ultimate postulates of that
philosophy were intellectual principles, they were such as could be
grasped by the soul only in its deep passion of love for spiritual
beauty. The condemnation which Baxter passes upon other philosophies
could not be brought with truth against Platonism. “In short,” he says,
“I am an enemy of their philosophy that vilify sense.... The Scripture
that saith of God that He is life and light, saith also that He is love,
and love is complacence, and complacence is joy; and to say God is
infinite, essential love and joy is a better notion than with Cartesians
and Cocceians to say that God and angels and spirits are but a thought
or an idea. What is Heaven to us if there be no love and joy?”[8] This
desire of life and love, along its upper levels of thought, was
satisfied by Platonism; it enabled the poets to forecast the life of the
soul in heaven, and of its anticipation on earth as a love of beauty.
There was a strong tendency, however, throughout this period of
religious poetry, toward a phase of devotional love which may be called
erotic mysticism, or that love for Christ which is characterized less by
admiration and more by tenderness and mere delight in the pure sensuous
experience of love. Contemplation of Christ’s divine nature as essential
beauty is totally absent from this passion. Christ as the object of this
love is conceived only as the perfection of physical beauty; and the
response within the soul of the lover is that of mere sensuous delight
either in the sight of his personal beauties or in the realization of
the union with him. This strain of religious devotion is heard in
Herbert, in Vaughan, and Crashaw. In Herbert, who confessed that he
entered the service of the church in order to be like Christ, “by making
humility lovely,”—a confession which breathes pure emotion,—there was
joined so sensuous a strain that “he seems to rejoice in the thoughts of
that word Jesus, and say, that the adding these words, my Master, to it,
and often repetition of them, seemed to perfume his mind, and leave an
oriental fragrancy in his very breath.”[9] The spectacle of the
crucified Saviour of man was especially influential in keeping this
strain of mystical devotion alive; and the minds of these poets are
continually dwelling upon the beauty of his mangled hands and feet. In a
nature so eminently intellectual as John Donne’s, this strain of feeling
is still present, and in his explanation of the grounds for such a love
is found an excellent account of its varying phases. In one of his
sermons he says:
“I love my Saviour, as he is _the Lord_, he that studies my salvation:
and as _Christ_, made a person able to work my salvation; but when I see
him in the third notion, _Jesus_, accomplishing my salvation, by an
actual death, I see those hands stretched out, that stretched out the
heavens, and those feet racked, to which they that racked them are
footstools: I hear him, from whom his nearest friends fled, pray for his
enemies, and him, whom his Father forsook, not forsake his brethren: I
see him that clothes this body with his creatures, or else it would
wither, and clothes this soul with his righteousness, or else it would
perish, hang naked upon the cross; ... when I conceit, when I
contemplate my Saviour thus, I love the _Lord_, and there is reverent
adoration in that love, I love _Christ_, and there is a mysterious
adoration in that love, but I love _Jesus_, and there is a tender
compassion in that love....” (Works, II. 181.)
Whenever Platonism enters into this tender passion it always elevates
the emotion into a higher region, where the more intellectual or
spiritual nature of Christ or God is the object of contemplation; and it
does this by affording the poets a conception of the object of the
soul’s highest love, as a philosophical principle, whether of beauty, of
good, or of true being.
The first way by which this elevation of a purely sensuous passion into
a higher region was effected was through the Platonic conception of the
“idea.” Plato had taught that in love the mind should pass from a sight
of the objects of beauty through ever widening circles of abstraction to
the contemplation of absolute beauty in its idea. This can be known only
by the soul, and is the only real beauty. Spenser’s “Hymne of Heavenly
Love” is the best example of the application of this idea to the love of
Christ. In this poem he sings the praise of Christ as the God of Love.
He finds the chief manifestation of Christ’s love in his sacrifice. At
first he treats this as a spectacle to move the eye. He dwells upon the
mangling of Christ’s body (ll. 241–247), and exhorts the beholder to
“bleede in every vaine,
At sight of his most sacred heavenly corse.”
(ll. 251–252.)
But later, instead of calling upon the beholder to lift up his “heavie
clouded eye” to behold such a manifestation of mercy (ll. 226–227), he
directs him to lift up his _mind_ and _meditate_ upon the author of his
salvation (l. 258). Christ’s love then will burn all earthly desire away
by the power of
“that celestiall beauties blaze,”
(l. 280.)
whose glory dazes the eye but illumines the spirit. And then, when this
final stage of refinement is past, the ravished soul of the beholder
shall have a sight not of
“his most sacred heavenly corse”
(l. 252.)
but of the very idea of his pure glory.
“Then shall thy ravisht soule inspired bee
With heavenly thoughts, farre above humane skill,
And thy bright radiant eyes shall plainely see
Th’ Idee of his pure glorie present still,
Before thy face, that all thy spirits shall fill
With sweet enragement of celestiall love,
Kindled through sight of those faire things above.”
(ll. 284–290.)
The “Hymne,” which celebrates the life of Christ on earth as a man among
men, closes, as it had begun, with the mind in the presence of heavenly
beauty.
In Phineas Fletcher the term “idea” is not used, but the habit of
thought is identical with that of Spenser’s. Christ is to be seen by the
soul, not in his bodily form, but in his “first beautie” and “true
majestie.” In the passage where these expressions occur Fletcher is
showing the manner of the love we should bestow upon Christ for that
which he has shown to us. He says that the only adequate return is to
give back to Christ the love he has given to us. He then prays that
Christ will inflame man with his glorious ray in order that he may rise
above a love of earthly things into heaven.
“So we beholding with immortall eye
The glorious picture of Thy heav’nly face,
In His first beautie and true Majestie,
May shake from our dull souls these fetters base;
And mounting up to that bright crystal sphere,
Whence Thou strik’st all the world with shudd’ring fear,
May not be held by earth, nor hold vile earth so deare.”
(“The Purple Island,” VI. 75.)
In Crashaw’s “In the Glorious Epiphanie of Our Lord God,” the elevation
of the subject from a sensuous image into an object of pure
contemplation is effected by conceiving Christ’s nature as that of true
being according to the Platonic notion. The first image brought before
the mind is that of the Christ child’s face.
“Bright Babe! Whose awfull beautyes make
The morn incurr a sweet mistake;
For Whom the officious Heavns devise
To disinheritt the sun’s rise:
Delicately to displace
The day, and plant it fairer in Thy face.”
(ll. 1–5.)
Soon, however, under this image of the face appears the hidden
conception of Christ as true being unchanging and everywhere present.
For Christ is addressed as
“All-circling point! all-centring sphear!
The World’s one, round, aeternall year:
Whose full and all-unwrinkled face
Nor sinks nor swells with time or place;
But every where and every while
Is one consistent, solid smile.”
(ll. 26–31.)
The poem, then, which had begun with a recognition of the beauty of the
Babe’s eyes in whose beauty the East had come to seek itself, ends in a
desire not to know what may be seen with the eyes, but to press on,
upward to a purely intellectual object,—Christ in heaven.
“Thus we, who when with all the noble powres
That (at Thy cost) are call’d not vainly, ours:
We vow to make brave way
Upwards, and presse on for the pure intelligentiall prey.”
(ll. 220–223.)
In those passages in Henry More, where the mystic union of the soul with
Christ or God is symbolized as a sensuous experience, the elevating
power of Platonism is noticeable in the progression of the poet’s mind
out of this lower plane into a higher region of pure thought. Thus in
“Psychathanasia” the advance is made from a treatment of the communion,
which the blest have with Christ in their partaking His body and blood,
to a contemplation of the beauty of God. In this union, which is shared
by those
“whose souls _deiform_ summitie
Is waken’d in this life, and so to God
Are nearly joynd in a firm Unitie,”
(III. i. 30.)
the true believers grow incorporate with Christ.
“Christ is the sunne that by his chearing might
Awakes our higher rayes to joyn with his pure light.
“And when he hath that life elicited,
He gives his own dear body and his bloud
To drink and eat. Thus dayly we are fed
Unto eternall life. Thus do we bud,
True heavenly plants, suck in our lasting food
From the first spring of life, incorporate
Into the higher world (as erst I show’d
Our lower rayes the soul to subjugate
To this low world) we fearlesse sit above all fate,
“Safely that kingdomes glory contemplate,
O’erflow with joy by a full sympathie
With that worlds spright, and blesse our own estate,
Praising the fount of all felicitie,
The lovely light of the blest Deitie.
Vain mortals think on this, and raise your mind
Above the bodies life; strike through the skie
With piercing throbs and sighs, that you may find
His face. Base fleshly fumes your drowsie eyes thus blind.”
(III. i. 31–33.)
In Giles Fletcher’s “Christ’s Triumph after Death” the most elaborate
attempt is made to convey the idea of the blessedness of the union of
the soul with God through the pleasure of mere sense and at the same
time to show how the object with which the soul is joined is in every
respect a super-sensible entity. At first the blessedness of the soul’s
life in heaven is presented both as a pleasurable enjoyment of the sense
of sight, of hearing, and even that of smell, and as a more spiritual
pleasure in the exercise of the faculties of understanding and will.
Speaking of the joy of those souls that ever hold
“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.
“A heav’nly feast, no hunger can consume;
A light unseene, yet shines in every place;
A sound, no time can steale; a sweet perfume
No winds can scatter; an intire embrace
That no satietie can ere unlace.”
(Stz. 41–42.)
Such was the powerful hold of the doctrines of Platonism upon the minds
of these religious poets. Strong as were the forces leading them into a
degenerate form of Christian love, these were overcome by the one
fundamental conception of Platonism that the highest love the soul can
know is the love of a purely intellectual principle of beauty and
goodness; and that this love is one in which passion and reason are
wedded into the one supreme desire of the seeker after wisdom and
beauty. Such a conception saved a large body of English poetry from
degenerating into that form of erotic mysticism which Crashaw’s later
poems reveal; and in which there is no elevation of the mind away from
the lower range of sense enjoyment, but only an introversion of the
physical life into the intimacies of spiritual experience.
II. EARTHLY LOVE
The influence of Platonism upon the love poetry of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries in England is felt in two distinct forms. In the
first place, the teachings of that philosophy were used to explain and
dignify the conception of love as a passion having its source in a
desire for the enjoyment of beauty; and in the second place, the
emphasis laid by Platonism upon the function of the soul as opposed to
the senses resulted in a tendency to treat love as a purely spiritual
passion devoid of all sensuous pleasure. In the first phase the
teachings of Platonic theory were made to render service according to
the conventional love theory known as Petrarchism; and in its second
phase Platonism contributed its share in keeping alive the so-called
metaphysical mood of the seventeenth-century lyric.
According to the conventional method of Petrarchism, the object of the
poet’s love was always a lady of great beauty and spotless virtue, and
of a correspondingly great cruelty. Hence the subjects of the
Petrarchian love poem were either the praise of the mistress’s beauty or
an account of the torment of soul caused by her heartless indifference.
By applying the doctrines of Platonism to this conventional manner, a
way was found to explain upon a seemingly philosophic basis the power of
the lover’s passion and of beauty as its exciting cause. The best
example in English of this application of Platonic theory is Spenser’s
two hymns,—“An Hymne in Honour of Love” and “An Hymne in Honour of
Beautie.”
The professed aim of Spenser in these hymns differs in no wise from the
purpose of the Petrarchian lover. Both are written to ease the torments
of an unrequited passion. In the “Hymne in Honour of Love” he addresses
love in his invocation:
“Love, that long since hast to thy mighty powre,
Perforce subdude my poore captived hart,
And raging now therein with restlesse stowre,
Doest tyrannize in everie weaker part;
Faine would I seeke to ease my bitter smart,
By any service I might do to thee,
Or ought that else might to thee pleasing bee.”
(ll. 4–10.)
In his closing stanzas he expresses the wish of coming at last to the
object of his desire. (ll. 298–300.) In the “Hymne in Honour of
Beautie,” he openly confesses a desire that through his hymn
“It may so please that she at length will streame
Some deaw of grace, into my withered hart,
After long sorrow and consuming smart.”
(ll. 29–31.)
The only respect in which these hymns differ from the mass of love
poetry of their time is in the method by which Spenser treated the
common subject of the poetical amorists of the Renaissance. In singing
the praises of love and beauty he drew upon the doctrines of Italian
Platonism, and by the power of his own genius blended the purely
expository and lyrical strains so that at times it is difficult to
separate them. The presence of Platonic doctrine, however, is felt in
the dignified treatment of the passion of love and of beauty.
In the “Hymne in Honour of Love” love is described as no merely cruel
passion inflicted by the tyrannical Cupid of the amorist, but as the
manifestation in man of the great informing power which brought the
universe out of chaos and which now maintains it in order and concord.
According to Ficino, the greatest representative of Italian Platonism
during the Renaissance, one truth established by the speech of
Eryximachus in the “Symposium” is that love is the creator and preserver
of all things. “Through this,” Ficino says in his “Commentarium in
Convivium,” “fire moves air by sharing its heat; the air moves the
water, the water moves the earth; and _vice versa_ the earth draws the
water to itself; water, the air; and the air, the fire. Plants and trees
also beget their like because of a desire of propagating their seed.
Animals, brutes, and men are allured by the same desire to beget
offspring.” (III. 2.) And in summing up his discussion he says,
“Therefore all parts of the universe, since they are the work of one
artificer and are members of the same mechanism like to one another both
in being and in life, are linked together by a certain mutual love, so
that love may be rightly declared the perpetual bond of the universe and
the unmoving support of its parts and the firm basis of the whole
mechanism.” (III. 3.) Holding to this conception of love Spenser comes
to a praise of the
“Great god of might, that reignest in the mynd,
And all the bodie to thy hest doest frame,”
(ll. 46–47.)
with an explanation of His power as the creating and sustaining spirit
of the universe. Before the world was created love moved over the
warring elements of chaos and arranged them in the order they now obey.
“Then through the world his way he gan to take,
The world that was not till he did it make;
Whose sundrie parts he from them selves did sever,
The which before had lyen confused ever,
“The earth, the ayre, the water, and the fyre,
Then gan to raunge them selves in huge array,
And with contrary forces to conspyre
Each against other, by all meanes they may,
Threatning their owne confusion and decay:
Ayre hated earth, and water hated fyre,
Till Love relented their rebellious yre.
“He then them tooke, and tempering goodly well
Their contrary dislikes with loved meanes,
Did place them all in order, and compell
To keepe them selves within their sundrie raines,
Together linkt with Adamantine chaines.”
(ll. 77–92.)
The second subject which was treated in the light of Platonism was that
of beauty. In the “Hymne in Honour of Beautie” the topic is treated from
three points of view. First, the “Hymne” outlines a general theory of
æsthetics to account for the presence of beauty in the universe lying
without us (ll. 32–87); second, it explains the ground of reason for the
beauty to be found in the human body (ll. 88–164); and third, it
accounts for the exaggerated notion which the lover has of his beloved’s
physical perfections. (ll. 214–270.)
Spenser’s general theory of æsthetics is a blending of two suggestions
he found in his study of Platonism. According to Ficino, beauty is a
spiritual thing, the splendor of God’s light shining in all things. (II.
5; V. 4.) This conception is based upon the idea that the universe is an
emanation of God’s spirit, and that beauty is the lively grace of the
divine light of God shining in matter. (V. 6.) But according to another
view, the universe is conceived as the objective work of an artificer,
working according to a pattern. “The work of the creator,” says Plato in
the “Timæus” (28, 29), “whenever he looks to the unchangeable and
fashions the form and the nature of his work after an unchangeable
pattern, must necessarily be made fair and perfect.... If the world be
indeed fair and the artificer good, it is manifest that he must have
looked to that which is eternal ... for the world is the fairest of
creations and he is the best of causes.” By blending these ideas Spenser
was able to conceive of God as creating the world after a pattern of
ideal beauty, which, by virtue of its infusion into matter, is the
source of that lively grace which the objects called beautiful possess.
At first he presents the view of creation which is more in accordance
with the Mosaic account,
“What time this worlds great workmaister did cast
To make al things, such as we now behold:
It seemes that he before his eyes had plast
A goodly Paterne to whose perfect mould,
He fashioned them as comely as he could,
That now so faire and seemely they appeare,
As nought may be amended any wheare.
“That wondrous Paterne
· · · · ·
Is perfect Beautie, which all men adore,
Whose face and feature doth so much excell
All mortall sence, that none the same may tell.”
(ll. 32–45.)
Spenser now passes on to the theory of the infusion of beauty in matter,
by which its grossness is refined and quickened, as it were, into life.
“Thereof as every earthly thing partakes,
Or more or lesse by influence divine,
So it more faire accordingly it makes,
And the grosse matter of this earthly myne,
Which clotheth it, thereafter doth refyne,
Doing away the drosse which dims the light
Of that faire beame, which therein is empight.
“For through infusion of celestiall powre,
The duller earth it quickneth with delight
And life-full spirits privily doth powre
Through all the parts, that to the looker’s sight
They seeme to please. That is thy soveraine might,
O _Cyprian_ Queene, which flowing from the beame
Of thy bright starre, then into them doest streame.”
(ll. 46–59.)
At this point of his “Hymne” Spenser pauses to refute the idea that
beauty is
“An outward shew of things, that onely seeme”
(l. 94.)
His pausing to overthrow such an idea of beauty is quite in the manner
of the scientific expositor in the Italian treatises and dialogues
written throughout the Renaissance. Ficino, for instance, combats the
idea, which he says some hold, that beauty is nothing but the proportion
of the various parts of an object with a certain sweetness of color. (V.
3.) In like manner Spenser says it is the idle wit that identifies
beauty with proportion and color, both of which pass away.
“How vainely then doe ydle wits invent,
That beautie is nought else, but mixture made
Of colours faire, and goodly temp’rament,
Of pure complexions, that shall quickly fade
And passe away, like to a sommers shade,
Or that it is but comely composition
Of parts well measurd, with meet disposition.”
(ll. 67–73.)
Spenser overthrows this contention by doubting the power of mere color
and superficial proportion to stir the soul of man. (ll. 74–87.) He has
proved the power of beauty only too well to maintain such a theory. He
thus seeks for the source of its power in the soul.
The Platonic theory of beauty teaches that the beauty of the body is a
result of the formative energy of the soul. According to Ficino, the
soul has descended from heaven and has framed a body in which to dwell.
Before its descent it conceives a certain plan for the forming of a
body; and if on earth it finds material favorable for its work and
sufficiently plastic, its earthly body is very similar to its celestial
one, hence it is beautiful. (VI. 6.) In Spenser this conception
underlies his account of the descent of the soul from God to earth.
“For when the soule, the which derived was
At first, out of that great immortall Spright,
By whom all live to love, whilome did pas
Downe from the top of purest heavens hight,
To be embodied here, it then tooke light
And lively spirits from that fayrest starre,
Which lights the world forth from his firie carre.
“Which powre retayning still or more or lesse,
When she in fleshly seede is eft enraced,
Through every part she doth the same impresse,
According as the heavens have her graced,
And frames her house, in which she will be placed,
Fit for her selfe, adorning it with spoyle
Of th’ heavenly riches, which she robd erewhyle.
· · · · ·
“So every spirit, as it is most pure,
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer bodie doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairely dight
With chearefull grace and amiable sight.
For of the soule the bodie forme doth take:
For soul is forme, and doth the bodie make.”
(ll. 109–136.)
The obvious objection which one might make to this theory, that it does
not cover the whole ground inasmuch as it could never account for the
fact of the existence of a good soul in any but a beautiful form, was
answered by the further explanation that when the matter of which the
soul makes its body is unyielding, the soul must content itself with a
less beautiful form. (Ficino, VI. 6.) Thus Spenser adds:
“Yet oft it falles, that many a gentle mynd
Dwels in deformed tabernacle drownd,
Either by chaunce, against the course of kynd,
Or through unaptnesse in the substance sownd,
Which it assumed of some stubborne grownd,
That will not yield unto her formes direction,
But is perform’d with some foule imperfection.”
(ll. 144–150.)
After an exhortation to the “faire Dames” to keep their souls unspotted
(ll. 165–200), Spenser outlines the true manner of love and in the
course of his poem he accounts for that manifestation of power which the
beloved’s beauty has over the mind of the lover. According to Ficino,
true lovers are those whose souls have departed from heaven under the
same astral influences and who, accordingly, are informed with the same
idea in imitation of which they frame their earthly bodies. (VI. 6.)
Thus Spenser writes that love is not a matter of chance, but a union of
souls ordained by heaven.
“For Love is a celestiall harmonie,
Of likely harts composd of starres concent,
Which joyne together in sweet sympathie,
To work ech others joy and true content,
Which they have harbourd since their first descent
Out of their heavenly bowres, where they did see
And know ech other here belov’d to bee.
“Then wrong it were that any other twaine
Should in loves gentle band combyned bee,
But those whom heaven did at first ordaine,
And made out of one mould the more t’ agree:
For all that like the beautie which they see,
Streight do not love: for love is not so light,
As straight to burne at first beholders sight.”
(ll. 200–213.)
He then explains the Platonist’s views of love as a passion. Ficino had
stated that the lover is not satisfied with the mere visual image of the
beloved, but refashions it in accordance with the idea of the beloved
which he has; for the two souls departing from heaven at the same time
were informed with the same idea. The lover, then, when he beholds the
person of the beloved, sees a form which has been made more in
conformity with the idea than his own body has; consequently he loves
it, and by refining the visual image of the beloved from all the
grossness of sense, he beholds in it the idea of his own soul and that
of the beloved; and in the light of this idea he praises the beloved’s
beauty. (VI. 6.) So Spenser:
“But they which love indeede, looke otherwise,
With pure regard and spotlesse true intent,
Drawing out of the object of their eyes,
A more refyned forme, which they present
Unto their mind, voide of all blemishment;
Which it reducing to her first perfection,
Beholdeth free from fleshes frayle infection.”
(ll. 214–220.)
Here there is no distinction of lover and beloved; but soon Spenser
passes on to consider the subject from the lover’s standpoint:
“And then conforming it unto the light,
Which in it selfe it hath remaining still
Of that first Sunne, yet sparckling in his sight,
Thereof he fashions in his higher skill,
An heavenly beautie to his fancies will,
And it embracing in his mind entyre,
The mirrour of his owne thought doth admyre.
“Which seeing now so inly faire to be,
As outward it appeareth to the eye,
And with his spirits proportion to agree,
He thereon fixeth all his fantasie,
And fully setteth his felicitie,
Counting it fairer, then it is indeede,
And yet indeede her fairenesse doth exceede.”
(ll. 221–234.)
With a description of the many beauties the lover sees in the
beloved—the thousands of graces that make delight on her forehead—the
poem ends. (ll. 235–270.)
The feature in this theory of Platonism which appealed to Spenser was
the high nature of the beauty seen in comeliness of form, as explained
by its doctrine of æsthetics. A sense of beauty as a spiritual quality
spreading its divine radiance over the objects of the outward world
envelops the poem in a golden haze of softened feeling characteristic of
Spenser’s poetic manner. The scientific terms of the Platonic theorist
melt away into the gentle flow of his verse. The soul being informed
with its idea, as Ficino had put it, has become in his “Hymne in Honour
of Beautie” that “faire lampe” which has “resemblence of that heavenly
light” of beauty (ll. 102, 124); or the idea of beauty in the soul is
spoken of as
“the light
Which in it selfe it hath remaining still;”
(ll. 221–222.)
or, as the lover’s “spirits proportion.”
In accordance with the same sense of beauty Spenser in the “Hymne in
Honour of Love” stops to explain away the cruelty which love seems to
show in afflicting him, an innocent sufferer, by calling attention to
the fact that such suffering is necessary to try the lover’s sincerity
in his worship of so high a thing as the beauty of his beloved. Love is
not physical desire, but a soaring of the mind to a sight of that high
beauty,
“For love is Lord of truth and loialtie,
Lifting himselfe out of the lowly dust,
On golden plumes up to the purest skie,
Above the reach of loathly sinfull lust,
· · · · ·
“Such is the powre of that sweet passion,
That it all sordid basenesse doth expell,
And the refyned mynd doth newly fashion
Unto a fairer forme which now doth dwell
In his high thought, that would it selfe excell;
Which he beholding still with constant sight,
Admires the mirrour of so heavenly light.”
(ll. 179–199.)
And even though the lover may not win the good graces of his lady, he is
happy in the sight of her beauty.
“And though he do not win his wish to end,
Yet thus farre happie he him selfe doth weene,
That heavens such happie grace did to him lend,
No thing on earth so heavenly, to have seene,
His harts enshrined saint, his heavens queene,
Fairer then fairest, in his fayning eye,
Whose sole aspect he counts felicitye.”
(ll. 214–220.)
Because of this love of beauty, Spenser was able to find more material
in the Renaissance criticism of Platonic æsthetics for his “Hymne in
Honour of Beautie” than in the corresponding hymn on love. Besides the
conception of the creative power of love, his “Hymne in Honour of Love”
draws upon a few suggestions which could dignify the power of the
passion. The saying of Diotima to Socrates in the “Symposium,”—“Marvel
not then at the love which all men have of their offspring; for that
universal love and interest is for the sake of immortality” (208)—is
made to do service in differentiating the passion of love in men from
that in beasts. By satisfying physical desire beasts
“all do live, and moved are
To multiply the likenesse of their kynd,
Whilest they seeke onely, without further care,
To quench the flame, which they in burning fynd:
But man, that breathes a more immortal mynd,
Not for lusts sake, but for eternitie,
Seekes to enlarge his lasting progenie.”
(ll. 102–109.)
Further, to add a sense of mystery to the nativity of the god of love,
Spenser refers to the myth of Penia and Poros, and also in the manner of
the Platonist tries to reconcile two contrary assertions about the
mysterious nature of love’s birth. In Diotima’s account of “the lesser
mysteries of love,” she says that love is the offspring of the god Poros
or Plenty, and of Penia or Poverty. (“Symposium,” 203.) In Phædrus’s
oration on love he began by affirming that “Love is a mighty god, and
wonderful among gods and men, but especially wonderful in his birth. For
he is the eldest of the gods.” (“Symposium,” 178.) Agathon, however,
differs from his friend Phædrus in saying that love is the youngest of
the gods. (“Symposium,” 195.) This disagreement was a source of
perplexity to the Platonist of the Renaissance; thus Ficino gives a
division of his commentary to a reconciliation of these statements. (V.
10.) He solves the difficulty by stating that when the Creator conceived
the order of angels, with whom Ficino identifies the gods of ancient
mythology, the love guiding God was before the angels, hence is the most
ancient of the gods; but when the created angelic intelligences turned
in their love to the Creator, the impelling love was the youngest,
coming after the creation of the angels. According to these notions of
the nativity of the god of love, Spenser opens his “Hymne.”
“Great god of might, that reignest in the mynd,
And all the bodie to thy hest doest frame,
Victor of gods, subduer of mankynd,
That doest the Lions and fell Tigers tame,
Making their cruell rage thy scornefull game,
And in their roring taking great delight;
Who can expresse the glorie of thy might?
“Or who alive can perfectly declare,
The wondrous cradle of thine infancie?
When thy great mother _Venus_ first thee bare,
Begot of Plentie and of Penurie,
Though elder then thine owne nativitie:
And yet a chyld, renewing still thy yeares;
And yet the eldest of the heavenly Peares.”
(ll. 46–59.)
Spenser’s “Hymnes” are the most comprehensive exposition of love in the
light of Platonic theory in English. The attempt, however, which he made
to place love upon a basis of philosophic fact is imitated in a much
less prominent way in other poets. Spenser himself refers to the subject
in “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe.” In that poem Colin unfolds to Cuddy
the high nature of love’s perfection. At the court, he says, love is the
all-engrossing topic (ll. 778–786); but it is love so shamefully
licentious that its “mightie mysteries” are profaned. (l. 790.) Love,
however, is a religious thing and should be so conceived. To support
this statement Colin explains the creative power of love manifest
throughout the wide range of nature (ll. 843–868) and points out that in
man it is a love of beauty. (ll. 869–880).
In a few of Jonson’s masques there are slight attempts to dignify the
subject of love in the manner of Spenser’s “Hymnes.” In “The Masque of
Beauty” love is described as the creator of the universe, and beauty is
mentioned as that for which the world was created. In one of the hymns
occurs this stanza:
“When Love at first, did move
From out of Chaos, brightned
So was the world, and lightned
As now.
_1. Echo._ As now!
_2. Echo._ As now!
Yield Night, then to the light,
As Blackness hath to Beauty:
Which is but the same duty.
It was for Beauty that the world was made,
And where she reigns, Love’s lights admit no shade.”
In a second song a reference is made to the mysterious nativity of love.
“So Beauty on the waters stood,
When Love had sever’d earth from flood!
So when he parted air from fire,
He did with concord all inspire!
And then a motion he them taught,
That elder than himself was thought.
Which thought was, yet, the child of earth,
For Love is elder than his birth.”
In “Love’s Triumph Through Callipolis” the same ideas appear. In this
masque, after the band of sensual lovers has been driven from the
suburbs of the City of Beauty (Callipolis), and a lustration of the
place has followed, Euclia, or “a fair glory, appears in the heavens,
singing an applausive Song, or Pæan of the whole.”
“So love emergent out of chaos brought
The world to light!
And gently moving on the waters, wrought
All form to sight!
Love’s appetite
Did beauty first excite:
And left imprinted in the air
These signatures of good and fair,
Which since have flow’d, flow’d forth upon the sense
To wonder first, and then to excellence,
By virtue of divine intelligence!”
In the same masque love is defined in accordance with the myth of Penia
and Poros:
“Love is the right affection of the mind,
The noble appetite of what is best:
Desire of union with the thing design’d,
But in fruition of it cannot rest.
“The father Plenty is, the mother Want,
Plenty the beauty which it wanteth draws;
Want yields itself: affording what is scant:
So both affections are the union’s cause.”
In “Love Freed From Ignorance and Folly” the sustaining power of love in
keeping the parts of the universe in concord is used to combat the
accusation that love is mere cruelty. Love, who is represented as a
captive of the Sphynx, thus replies to the charge:
“Cruel Sphynx, I rather strive
How to keep the world alive,
And uphold it; without me,
All again would chaos be.”
In “The Barriers” where Truth and Opinion—a division of the state of
knowing according to its degree of certainty common in Plato as
knowledge and opinion (“Republic,” V. 476–478)—hold a discussion on
marriage, an angel declares that
“Eternal Unity behind her [i.e. Truth] shines,
That fire and water, earth and air combines.”
Here under the name of Unity the true nature of love is indicated.
In Drayton’s seventh eclogue Batte replies to a charge of cruelty
against love which is made by his fellow-shepherd, Borril, with the
“substancyall ryme
that to thy teeth sufficiently shall proove
there is no power to be compard to love.”
His argument is that love is the great bond of the universe.
“What is Love but the desire
of the thing that fancy pleaseth?
A holy and resistlesse fiere
weake and strong alike that ceaseth,
which not heaven hath power to let
Nor wise nature cannot smother,
whereby Phœbus doth begette
on the universal mother.
that the everlasting chaine
which together al things tied,
and unmooved them retayne
and by which they shall abide;
that concent we cleerely find
all things doth together drawe,
and so strong in every kinde
subjects them to natures law.
whose hie virtue number teaches
in which every thing dooth moove,
from the lowest depth that reaches
to the height of heaven above.”
(ll. 165–184.)
A more common appropriation of the teachings of Platonism was made in
the love lyrics—chiefly the sonnet—written in the Petrarchian manner.
Petrarchism was as much a manner of writing sonnets as it was a method
of making love. On its stylistic side it was characterized by the use of
antitheses, puns, and especially of conceits. In the Platonic theory of
love and beauty a certain amount of material was offered which could be
reworked into a form suited for the compact brevity of the sonnet.
Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare are the three chief sonnet writers of
the last decade of the sixteenth century in whose work this phase of
Platonism is to be found; but its presence, though faint, can be felt in
others.
One way in which this theory was applied is found in the manner in which
these poets speak of the beauty of their beloved. Plato has stated that
wisdom is the most lovely of all ideas, and that, were there a visible
image of her, she would be transporting. (“Phædrus,” 250.) Sidney seizes
upon this suggestion, and by identifying his Stella with wisdom he can
frame a sonnet ending in a couplet that shall have the required
epigrammatic point. He writes:
“The wisest scholler of the wight most wise,
By _Phœbus_ doome, with sugred sentence sayes:
That vertue if it once meete with our eyes,
Strange flames of love it in our soules would rayse.
But for that man with paine this truth discries,
While he each thing in sences ballances wayes,
And so, nor will nor can behold these skyes,
Which inward Sunne to heroicke mindes displaies.
Vertue of late with vertuous care to stir
Love of himselfe, takes _Stellas_ shape, that hee
To mortal eyes might sweetly shine in her.
It is most true, for since I did her see,
Vertues great beautie in her face I prove,
And finde defect; for I doe burne in love.”
(xxv.)
Shakespeare is able to praise the beauty of the subject of his sonnets
by identifying him with the absolute beauty of the Platonic philosophy,
and by describing him in accordance with this notion. Thus he confesses
that his argument is simply the fair, kind, and true, back of which
statement may be inferred the theory upheld by Platonism that the good,
the beautiful, and the true are but different phases of one reality. His
love, he says, cannot be called idolatry because his songs are directed
to this theme, for only in his friend are these three themes united into
one.
“Let not my love be call’d idolatry,
Nor my belovéd as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
‘Fair, kind, and true’ is all my argument,
‘Fair, kind, and true’ varying to other words;
And in this change is my invention spent,
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
‘Fair, kind, and true,’ have often liv’d alone,
Which three, till now, never kept seat in one.”
(cv.)
In another sonnet one phase of this argument is given a detailed
treatment, and the poet’s object is to praise the beauty of his friend
by describing its contrast with the beauty of earth, just as if he were
speaking of absolute beauty. In this sonnet he uses the Platonic
phraseology of the substance and the shadow, by which he means first,
the reality that makes a thing what it is, the substance, not the matter
or stuff of which it is made; and second, the reflection of that reality
in the objective world, the shadow of the substance, not the obscuration
of light.[10] He thus writes of his friend’s beauty as if it were the
substance of beauty, beauty absolute, of which all other beauty is but a
reflection.
“What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since every one hath, every one, one shade,
And you, but one, can every shadow lend.
Describe _Adonis_, and the counterfeit
Is poorly imitated after you;
On _Helen’s_ cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in _Grecian_ tires are painted new:
Speak of the spring and foison of the year,
The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
The other as your bounty doth appear;
And you in every blesséd shape we know,
In all external grace you have some part,
But you like none, none you, for constant heart.”
(liii.)
Spenser, too, praises his beloved by conceiving her as absolute beauty,
of which all other objects are but shadows. In the light of her beauty
all the glory of the world appears but a vain show.
“My hungry eyes through greedy covetize,
still to behold the object of their paine:
with no contentment can themselves suffize.
but having pine and having not complaine.
For lacking it they cannot lyfe sustayne,
and having it they gaze on it the more:
in their amazement lyke _Narcissus_ vaine
whose eyes him starv’d: so plenty makes me poore.
Yet are mine eyes so filled with the store
of that faire sight, that nothing else they brooke,
but lothe the things which they did like before,
and can no more endure on them to looke.
All this worlds glory seemeth vayne to me,
and all their showes but shadowes saving she.”
(xxxv.)
In George Daniel the idea of the substance and shadow again occurs. He
says that it is enough for him if he may behold his mistress’s face,
although others may boast of her favors; for in contemplating her
glories he sees how all other forms are but empty shadows of her
perfection.
“It is Enough to me,
If I her Face may see;
Let others boast her Favours, and pretend
Huge Interests; whilst I
Adore her Modestie;
Which Tongues cannot deprave, nor Swords defend.
· · · · ·
“But while I bring
My verse to Sing
Her Glories, I am strucke with wonder, more;
And all the Formes I see,
But Emptie Shadowes bee,
Of that Perfection which I adore.
“Be silent then,
All Tongues of Men,
To Celebrate the Sex: for if you fall
To other Faces, you
Wander, and but pursue
Inferior objects, weake and partiall.”
(Ode xxiv.)
A second tenet of Platonism which was reworked into English love poetry
was its conception of love. As Spenser had explained in his “Hymne in
Honour of Beautie,” true love has its source in the life of two souls in
heaven. (ll. 200–213.) Drummond uses the idea to explain the purity of
his love.
“That learned Grecian, who did so excel
In knowledge passing sense, that he is nam’d
Of all the after-worlds divine, doth tell,
That at the time when first our souls are fram’d,
Ere in these mansions blind they come to dwell,
They live bright rays of that eternal light,
And others see, know, love, in heaven’s great height,
Not toil’d with aught to reason doth rebel.
Most true it is, for straight at the first sight
My mind me told, that in some other place
It elsewhere saw the idea of that face,
And lov’d a love of heavenly pure delight;
No wonder now I feel so fair a flame,
Sith I her lov’d ere on this earth she came.”
(“Poems.” First Pt., S. vii.)
In Vaughan the same theory of love is again referred to as a proof of
the poet’s lofty passion. In “To Amoret. Walking in a Starry Evening,”
he says that even were her face a distant star shining upon him, he
would be sure of a sympathy between it and himself, because their minds
were united in love by no accident or chance of sight, but were designed
for one another.
“But, Amoret, such is my fate,
That if thy face a star
Had shin’d from far,
I am persuaded in that state,
’Twixt thee and me,
Of some predestin’d sympathy.
“For sure such two conspiring minds,
Which no accident, or sight,
Did thus unite;
Whom no distance can confine
Start, or decline,
One for another were design’d.”
(Stzs. 3, 4.)
In a second lyric, “A Song to Amoret,” he describes his love as superior
to that which a “mighty amorist” could give, because it is a love that
was born with his soul in heaven.
“For all these arts I’d not believe,
—No, though he should be thine—
The mighty amorist could give
So rich a heart as mine.
“Fortune and beauty thou might find,
And greater men than I:
By my true resolvèd mind
They never shall come nigh.
“For I not for an hour did love,
Or for a day desire,
But with my soul had from above
This endless, holy fire.”
(Stzs. 4–6.)
Thus far the tenets of Platonic theory have been used in a more or less
direct way; but in several instances the Platonic idea is present only
in the writer’s mind, and the reader is left to unravel it by his own
ingenuity. Thus Shakespeare urges his friend to marry because in his
death truth and beauty will both end—a possible inference being that his
friend is ideal beauty.
“Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;
And yet methinks I have Astronomy,
But not to tell of good, or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
Or say with Princes if it shall go well,
By oft predict that I in heaven find:
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert;
Or else of thee this I prognosticate:
Thy end is Truth’s and Beauty’s doom and date.”
(xiv.)
In another sonnet Shakespeare plays with words in an attempt to excuse
his truant muse for not praising his friend’s beauty. His muse may say
that since his friend is true beauty he needs no praise.
“O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends
For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?
Both truth and beauty on my love depends;
So dost thou too, and therein dignified.
Make answer, Muse; wilt thou not haply say
‘Truth needs no colour with his colour fix’d;
Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay;
But best is best, if never intermix’d?’”
But so closely identified is the praise of his friend’s beauty with the
immortality conferred by poetry that Shakespeare cannot justly excuse
the silence of his muse
“Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
Excuse not silence so; for’t lies in thee
To make him much outlive a gilded tomb,
And to be praised of ages yet to be.”
(ci.)
Again, Shakespeare describes how, when absent from his friend, he is
able to play with the flowers as shadows of his friend’s beauty.
“They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem’d it Winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.”
(xcviii.)
In Spenser the lover is able to make an appeal for pity by reference to
the Platonic conception of the idea of the beloved which the lover is
supposed to behold in his soul.
“Leave lady in your glasse of christall clene,
your goodly selfe for evermore to vew;
and in my selfe, my inward selfe, I meane,
most lively lyke behold your semblant trew.
Within my hart, though hardly it can shew,
thing so divine to vew of earthly eye:
the fayre Idea of your celestiall hew,
and every part remaines immortally:
And were it not that, through your cruelty,
with sorrow dimmed and deformed it were:
the goodly ymage of your visnomy,
clearer than christall would therein appere.
But if your selfe in me ye playne will see,
remove the cause by which your fayre beames darkened be.”
(xlv.)
The end which this conception of making love after the manner of the
Platonist served was thought to be found in a purification of love. By
praising the beauty of the beloved in such lofty terms the poet was able
to set off the purity of his love from any connection with mere sensual
desire. Thus Spenser testifies to the ennobling power of the beauty of
his beloved’s eyes.
“More then most faire, full of the living fire
Kindled above unto the maker neere:
no eies but joyes, in which al powers conspire,
that to the world naught else be counted deare.
Thrugh your bright beams doth not y^e blinded guest,
shoot out his harts to base affections wound;
but Angels come to lead fraile mindes to rest
in chast desires on heavenly beauty bound.
You frame my thoughts and fashion me within,
you stop my toung, and teach my hart to speake,
you calme the storme that passion did begin,
strong thrugh your cause, but by your vertue weak,
Dark is the world, where your light shined never:
well is he borne that may behold you ever.”
(viii.)
In Sidney there is a direct reference to the power of Plato’s thought to
lead the mind from the desire with which he is struggling.
“Your words, my freends me causelesly doe blame,
My young minde marde whom love doth menace so:
· · · · ·
That _Plato_ I have reade for nought, but if he tame
Such coltish yeeres; that to my birth I owe
Nobler desires:”
(xxi.)
The application of the tenets of Platonic theory to the writing of love
lyrics in the Petrarchian manner, however, was never anything more than
a courtly way of making love through exaggerated conceit and fine
writing. Fulke Greville saw clearly the relation between the love of
woman and the love of the idea of her beauty. In the tenth sonnet of his
“Cælica” he asks what can love find in a mind where all is passion;
rather he says go back to
“that heavenly quire
Of Nature’s riches, in her beauties placed,
And there in contemplation feed desire,
Which till it wonder, is not rightly graced;
For those sweet glories, which you do aspire,
Must, as idea’s, only be embraced,
Since excellence in other forme enjoyed,
Is by descending to her saints destroyed.”
The love of the idea of beauty, however, in its absolute nature is
nowhere present in the mass of love lyrics written between 1590 and
1600. The term is used to give title to Drayton’s “Idea,” and to
denominate the object of twelve sonnets addressed by Craig to “Idea”;
and anagrams on the French word for the term L’Idée, Diella and Delia,
are used to name two series of poems by Linche and Samuel Daniel,
respectively. Crashaw’s “Wishes” is addressed to “his (supposed)
mistresse,” as an idea. No better commentary on the whole movement can
be made than these words of Spenser in which it is easily seen how the
method conduced only to feeding the lower desires of the soul in love.
Writing in 1596, in the midst of the period when sonnet writing was most
popular in England, he says, speaking of his two “Hymnes”:
“Having in the greener times of my youth, composed these former two
Hymnes in the praise of Love and beautie, and finding that the same too
much pleased those of like age and disposition, which being too
vehemently caried with that kind of affection, do rather sucke out
poyson to their strong passion, then hony to their honest delight, I was
moved ... to call in the same. But being unable so to doe, by reason
that many copies thereof were formerly scattered abroad, I resolved at
least to amend, and by way of retraction to reforme them, making in
stead of those two Hymnes of earthly or naturall love and beautie, two
others of heavenly and celestiall.”
The great representative of Platonism in English poetry thus condemns
the less vital phase of Platonic thought. The great weakness of the
theory lay in the fact that it had no moral significance; and just here
lay the great strength of Plato’s ethics. Although preaching that beauty
was a spiritual thing, this phase of Platonic æsthetics never blended
with the conception of the beauty of moral goodness. And it failed to do
this because it is a theory not of Plato but of Plotinus, who throughout
the period of the Renaissance was understood to expound the true meaning
of Plato’s thought. But Plato left no system of æsthetics; Plotinus,
however, constructed a theory to account for beauty in its strictest
sense. Now Ficino in his propaganda of Platonic theory throughout the
Renaissance interpreted Plato’s “Symposium” in the light of Plotinus and
thus in his commentary, the source of all Renaissance theorizing on
love, is found the theory reflected in the English poets. This fusion of
Plato’s ethics with the æsthetics of Plotinus was not perfect; and to
the deep moral genius of Spenser’s mind the disparity soon became
evident.
The Platonic theory of love had enabled the English poets to write about
their passion as a desire of enjoying the spiritual quality of beauty in
their beloved. In those poets in whom the Petrarchistic manner is
evident, it is the object of love on which the attention centres; only
in a slight way did they treat of the nature of love as a passion. The
result of the discussion of love, as opened by Platonism, ended,
however, in an attempt to place love upon a purely spiritual basis and
to write about it as if it were a psychological fact that was to be
known by analysis. A consideration of beauty, as the object of love, is
absent; attention is directed to the quality of the passion as one felt
in the soul rather than by the sense; and when the attraction of woman
is present in this love it is carefully differentiated from the
attraction of sex. In the body of love lyrics written in the seventeenth
century the distinctive traits of this passion are clearly explained.
The chief trait of this kind of love is that it concerns only the soul.
The union of the lover and the beloved is simply a union of their souls
which because of the high nature of the soul can triumph over time and
space. The character of this union is described in Donne’s “Ecstacy.”
The two lovers are described as sitting in silence, watching one
another. While thus engaged their souls are so mysteriously mingled that
they are mixed into one greater soul which is not subject to change.
Even when the passion descends from this height to the plane of human
affections there is no essential change in the purity of the love.
“Where, like a pillow on a bed,
A pregnant bank swell’d up, to rest
The violet’s reclining head,
Sat we two, one another’s best.
· · · · ·
“As, ’twixt two equal armies, Fate
Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls—which to advance their state,
Were gone out—hung ’twixt her and me.
· · · · ·
“This ecstacy doth unperplex
(We said), and tell us what we love;
We see by this, it was not sex;
We see, we saw not, what did move:
“But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things they know not what,
Love these mix’d souls doth mix again,
And makes both one, each this, and that.
· · · · ·
“When love with one another so
Interanimates two souls,
That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
Defects of loneliness controls.
“We then, who are this new soul, know,
Of what we are composed, and made,
For th’ atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade.
· · · · ·
“And if some lover, such as we
Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see
Small change when we’re to bodies gone.”
In a like strain Randolph in “A Platonic Elegy” praises his love as that
founded on reason, not on sense. The true union in love, he says, is the
meeting of essence with essence.
“Thus they, whose reasons love, and not their sense,
The spirits love; thus one intelligence
Reflects upon his like, and by chaste loves
In the same sphere this and that angel moves.
· · · · ·
“When essence meets with essence, and souls join
In mutual knots, that’s the true nuptial twine.
Such, lady, is my love, and such is true:
All other love is to your sex, not you.”
(ll. 31–34, 45–48.)
The great value which this purely spiritual love was supposed to possess
was that it was unaffected either by time or distance. The union, not
being one known to sense, could exist as well in the absence of the
lovers as in the presence of both. This thought is a great comfort and
is emphasized as the peculiarity in the lovers’ passion that sets it
apart from the vulgar kind. Thus Donne in the song, “Soul’s Joy,”
consoles his beloved with the assurance that their souls may meet though
their bodies be absent.
“Soul’s joy, now I am gone,
And you alone,
—Which cannot be,
Since I must leave myself with thee,
And carry thee with me—
Yet when unto our eyes
Absence denies
Each other’s sight,
And makes to us a constant night,
When others change to light;
_O give no way to grief,
But let belief
Of mutual love
This wonder to the vulgar prove,
Our bodies, not we move_.
“Let not thy wit beweep
Words but sense deep;
For when we miss
By distance our hope’s joining bliss
Even then our souls shall kiss;
Fools have no means to meet,
But by their feet;
Why should our clay
Over our spirits so much sway,
To tie us to that way?
_O give no way to grief, etc._”
In his “Valediction Forbidding Mourning,” Donne again recurs to the
subject of separation and explains by the figure of the compass how
their souls will be one. The love in which the mind is bent on the
objects of sense cannot admit of absence; but the love shared by Donne
and his mistress is so refined that their souls suffer only an expansion
and not separation in absence.
“Dull sublunary lover’s love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, ’cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.
“But we by a love so far refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less eyes, lips and hands to miss.
“Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
“If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.
“And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.”
(Stzs. 4–8.)
Even in death this love will still live. Thus Lord Herbert explains that
his love has passed over into that of the soul, and it will be as
immortal as the soul.
“But since I must depart, and that our love
Springing at first but in an earthly mould
Transplanted to our souls, now doth remove
Earthly affects, which time and distance would,
Nothing now can our loves allay,
Though as the better Spirits will,
That both love us and know our ill,
We do not either all the good we may.
Thus when our Souls that must immortal be,
For our loves cannot die, nor we (unless
We die not both together) shall be free
Unto their open and eternal peace.
Sleep, Death’s Embassador, and best
Image, doth yours often so show,
That I thereby must plainly know,
Death unto us must be freedom and rest.”[11]
The second characteristic of this love is that it is purely
contemplative, informing the mind with knowledge rather than satisfying
the senses with pleasure. Habington has left a poem entitled “To the
World. The Perfection of Love,” in which he contrasts this love in which
the soul is engaged with thoughts with the love of sense.
“You who are earth, and cannot rise
Above your sence,
Boasting the envyed wealth which lyes
Bright in your mistris’ lips or eyes,
Betray a pittyed eloquence.
“That, which doth joyne our soules, so light
And quicke doth move,
That, like the eagle in his flight,
It doth transcend all humane sight,
Lost in the element of love.
“You poets reach not this, who sing
The praise of dust
But kneaded, when by theft you bring
The rose and lilly from the spring,
Τ’ adorne the wrinckled face of lust.
“When we speake love, nor art, nor wit
We glosse upon:
Our soules engender, and beget
Ideas which you counterfeit
In your dull propagation.
“While time seven ages shall disperse,
Wee’le talke of love,
And when our tongues hold no commerse,
Our thoughts shall mutually converse;
And yet the blood no rebell prove.
“And though we be of severall kind,
Fit for offence:
Yet are we so by love refin’d,
From impure drosse we are all mind,
Death could not more have conquer’d sence.”
By virtue of this contemplation in love the passion was freed from any
disturbing element due to absence, just as the restriction of love to
the soul had been thought to do. Vaughan boasts to Amoret that he can
dispense with a sight of her face or with a kiss because when absent
from her he can court the mind.
“Just so base, sublunary lovers’ hearts
Fed on loose profane desires,
May for an eye
Or face comply:
But those remov’d, they will as soon depart,
And show their art,
And painted fires.
“Whilst I by pow’rful love, so much refin’d,
That my absent soul the same is,
Careless to miss
A glance or kiss,
Can with these elements of lust and sense
Freely dispense,
And court the mind.”
In the examples thus far given, the character of the passion as shared
by lover and beloved has been merely described. There was an attempt
made in some of this poetry to define love as if it were a something to
be analyzed—a product, as it were, of psychological elaboration. Vaughan
has indicated the two traits in the love lyrist of the seventeenth
century, when he gives the following title to a lyric,—“To Amoret, of
the Difference ’Twixt Him and Other Lovers, and What True Love Is.” In
defining “What True Love Is,” the poets show that it cannot be desire,
but is rather an essence pure in itself, and in one instance it is
described as something unknowable either to sense or to mind.
Donne has left a letter in verse “To the Countess of Huntingdon,” in
which he carefully explains how love cannot be desire. Sighing and
moaning may be love, but it is love made in a weak way; love should
never cast one down, but should elevate.
“I cannot feel the tempest of a frown;
I may be raised by love, but not thrown down;
Though I can pity those sigh twice a day,
I hate that thing whispers itself away.
Yet since all love is fever, who to trees
Doth talk, doth yet in love’s cold ague freeze.
’Tis love, but with such fatal weakness made,
That it destroys itself with its own shade.”
(ll. 27–34.)
At first love was mere desire, ignorant of its object; but now love is a
matter of the soul, and it is profane to call rages of passion love.
“As all things were one nothing, dull and weak,
Until this raw disorder’d heap did break,
And several desires led parts away,
Water declined with earth, the air did stay,
Fire rose, and each from other but untied,
Themselves unprison’d were and purified;
So was love, first in vast confusion hid,
An unripe willingness which nothing did,
A thirst, an appetite which had no ease,
That found a want, but knew not what would please.
What pretty innocence in those days moved!
Man ignorantly walk’d by her he loved;
Both sigh’d and interchanged a speaking eye;
Both trembled and were sick: both knew not why.”
(ll. 37–51.)
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;
· · · · ·
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.
· · · · ·
“If, as in water stirr’d more circles be
Produced by one, love such additions take,
Those like so many spheres but one heaven make,
For they are all concentric unto thee.”
(I. 34, 35.)
Again, in “The Dream,” he fears the strength of his beloved’s affection
if it is mingled with a sense of fear, or shame, or honor.
“That love is weak where fear’s as strong as he;
T’is not all spirit, pure and brave,
If mixture it of fear, shame, honour have;”
(I. 39.)
This refinement of the subject of love is carried to an even greater
excess. Love is such a passion that it can be defined only by negatives.
It is above apprehension, because sense and soul both can know the
object of their love. In the poem of Donne’s “Negative Love,” in which
this idea is expressed, it is probable that the poet has in mind the
description of The One which Plotinus outlines in the “Enneads.” Summing
up his discussion of The One, or The Good, in which he has pointed out
how it is above intellect, Plotinus says: “If, however, anything is
present with _the good_, it is present with it in a way transcending
knowledge and intelligence and a cosensation of itself, since it has not
anything different from itself.... On this account says Plato [in the
“Parmenides,” speaking of _the one_] that neither language can describe,
nor sense nor science apprehend it, because nothing can be predicated of
it as present with it.” (“Enneads,” VI. vii. 41.) Transferring this idea
of the transcendency of The One to his love, Donne had the form of
thought for his lyric.
“I never stoop’d so low, as they
Which on an eye, cheek, lip, can prey;
Seldom to them which soar no higher
Than virtue, or the mind to admire.
For sense and understanding may
Know what gives fuel to their fire;
My love, though silly, is more brave;
For may I miss whene’er I crave,
If I know yet what I would have.
“If that be simply perfectest,
Which can by no way be express’d
But negatives, my love is so.
To all, which all love, I say no.
If any who deciphers best,
What we know not—ourselves—can know,
Let him teach me that nothing. This
As yet my ease and comfort is,
Though I speed not, I cannot miss.”
This reference to the knowledge of self also occurs in Plotinus in the
preceding sentence to the passage already extracted. “For the mandate,”
he says, “‘know thyself,’ was delivered to those, _who, on account of
the multitude which they possess_, find it requisite to enumerate
themselves, and in order that by knowing the number and quality of the
things contained in their essence, they may perceive that they have not
a knowledge of all things, or, indeed, of anything [which they ought to
know], and who are ignorant over what they ought to rule, and what is
the characteristic of their nature.” (VI. vii. 41.)
This highly metaphysical conception of love, the character of which has
been shown in a few selected examples, became in the course of time
known as “Platonic Love.” Scattered throughout the lyric poetry of the
seventeenth century may be found certain poems labelled “Platonic Love.”
Their presence among the author’s work is no testimony whatsoever that
it is colored by any strain of Platonism, but merely signifies that at
one time in his career the poet wrote love lyrics according to the
prevailing manner of the time. For about 1634 Platonic love was a court
fad. Howell, writing under date of June 3, 1634, says: “The Court
affords little News at present, but that there is a Love call’d
Platonick Love which much sways there of late: it is a Love abstracted
from all corporeal gross Impressions and sensual Appetite, but consists
in Contemplations and Ideas of the Mind, not in any carnal Fruition.
This Love sets the Wits of the Town on work; and they say there will be
a Mask shortly of it, whereof Her Majesty and her Maids of Honour will
be part.”[12]
The masque referred to is D’Avenant’s “The Temple of Love” (1634). In
Thomas Heywood’s “Love’s Mistress or the Queen’s Masque” (1640) the myth
of Cupid and Psyche is interpreted in accordance with the notion of
Platonic love; and in D’Avenant’s “Platonick Lovers” (1636) the subject
of Platonic love is ridiculed. It is probable that the rise of this
custom at the court was due to the presence of Henrietta Maria, the
queen of Charles I. Margaret of Valois had made Platonic love known in
France; and had shown how licentiousness of conduct was compatible with
its practice. “She had a high harmonious soul,” writes Howell,[13] “much
addicted to music and the sweets of love, and oftentimes in a Platonic
way; She would have this Motto often in her mouth; _Voulez vous cesser
d’aymer? possedez la chose aymée._... She had strains of humors and
transcendencies beyond the vulgar, and delighted to be call’d _Venus
Urania_.” It is probable that the young queen wished to follow such an
example and made known to the English court this new way of love
gallantry. The practice of making love in the Platonic way grew so
popular at any rate as to become a question of serious discussion. John
Norris says, “_Platonic Love_ is a thing in every Bodies Mouth,” and
after comparing it with the love described by Plato in the “Symposium,”
he concludes, “But why this should be call’d by the name of _Platonic_
Love, the best reason that I know of, is because People will have it
so.”[14] Algernon Sidney has left an account of love as a desire of
enjoying beauty. He concludes that since man is midway between angels
and beasts, his love will share in the peculiarities of both the
celestial and the sensual passion.[15] Walter Charleton ridicules the
subject and unmasks its immorality, although his purpose is not in any
way to purify the morals of his readers.[16] Robert Boyle wrote, but did
not publish, a series of letters, “wherein [among other subjects]
Platonic love was explicated, celebrated, and wherein the cure of love
was proposed and prosecuted.”[17]
The ideas expressed in these poems on Platonic love are not essentially
different from those in the lyrics which have been already discussed. At
times, as in Stanley’s “Love’s Innocence,” the Platonic manner is
understood as one devoid of all danger. It was in this way that Vaughan
looked upon his love for Amoret. “You have here,” he says, “a flame,
bright only in its own innocence, that kindles nothing but a generous
thought, which though it may warm the blood, the fire at highest is but
Platonic; and the commotion, within these limits, excludes danger.”[18]
On the other hand, Carew’s “Song to a Lady, not yet Enjoyed by her
Husband,” shows how the stock ideas was used to cloak the immorality of
the poet’s thought. George Daniel has left a series of poems revealing
the several phases of this love ranging between the two extremes. He
writes one “To Cinthia, coying it,” in which its innocence is preached.
“To Cinthia Converted” describes the union of the two souls. “To the
Platonicke Pretender” warns the ladies from listening to this love when
taught by a libertine. “Pure Platonicke” explains the spiritual nature
of the passion by contrast with sensual love. “Court-Platonicke” shows
how at court it was used merely as a means to an improper end.
“Anti-Platonicke” recites the feelings of the sensual lover.[19] In Lord
Herbert are found two other phases of this love. The first and second of
his poems named “Platonick Love” are complimentary poems addressed to a
lady; the first, telling her how the love inspired by her refines his
soul, and the second celebrating Platonic love in general application.
“For as you can unto that height refine
All Loves delights, as while they do incline
Unto no vice, they so become divine,
We may as well attain your excellence,
As, without help of any outward sense
Would make us grow a pure Intelligence.”
(Stz. 2.)
In the third “Platonicke Love” the lover is represented as wavering
between despair and hope with a slight balance in favor of the latter.
He is disconsolate because he finds no hope
“when my matchless Mistress were inclin’d
To pity me, ’twould scarcely make me glad,
The discomposing of so fair a mind
Being that which would to my Affections add.”
(Stz. 1.)
He finds hope, however, in the thought that
“though due merit I cannot express,
Yet she shall know none ever lov’d for less
Or easier reward. Let her remain
Still great and good, and from her Happiness
My chief contentment I will entertain.”
(Stz. 7.)
He ends with hope still living:
“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.
The atmosphere in which the metaphysical treatment of love flourished
was intensely intellectual. The poets in whom the strain is clearest
were trying to accomplish two thing: they wished to oppose the idea of
passion in love, and they endeavored to account for the attraction of
sex in the love which they themselves experienced. However much these
poets wished to exclude the notion of sex, their minds were constantly
busied in trying to solve the source of its power. In Donne, the
greatest representative of the metaphysical manner, this purpose is very
evident. He wrote his longest poem, “An Anatomy of the World,” to show
how, by reason of the death of a certain young woman, “the frailty and
the decay of this whole world is represented.” In reply to Jonson’s
criticism, that this poem was “full of blasphemies,” Donne remarked that
“he described the Idea of a Woman, and not as she was.”[21] Here lies
the secret of Donne’s treatment of woman; he was interested in her, not
as a personality, but as an idea. In solving the nature of this idea he
recurred to certain Platonic conceptions by which he thought to explain
the source of her power.
These Platonic conceptions are two. Woman is identified with virtue; she
is the source of all virtue in the world, others being virtuous only by
participating in her virtue. Thus in a letter “To the Countess of
Huntingdon” he shows how virtue has been raised from her fallen state on
earth by appearing in woman. She was once scattered among men, but now
summed up in one woman.
“If the world’s age and death be argued well
By the sun’s fall, which now towards earth doth bend,
Then we might fear that virtue, since she fell
So low as woman, should be near her end.
“But she’s not stoop’d, but raised; exiled by men
She fled to heaven, that’s heavenly things, that’s you;
She was in all men thinly scatter’d then,
But now a mass contracted in a few.
“She gilded us, but you are gold; and she
Informed us, but transubstantiates you.
Soft dispositions, which ductile be,
Elixirlike, she makes not clean, but new.
“Though you a wife’s and mother’s name retain,
’Tis not as woman, for all are not so;
But virtue, having made you virtue, is fain
To adhere in these names, her and you to show.
“Else, being alike pure, we should neither see;
As, water being into air rarefied,
Neither appear, till in one cloud they be,
So, for our sakes, you do low names abide.”
Beneath this torture of conceits may be seen the idea that woman is that
very virtue of which Plato has spoken in his “Phædrus.” Sidney has used
the idea to compliment Stella; but Donne’s purpose is to show how woman,
as woman, is to be identified with it, and that the differentiation in
the concept resulting from the fact that she may be a wife or a mother
is due to the necessity that this virtue become visible on earth.
The second Platonic conception through which Donne conveys his idea of
woman’s nature is the universal soul. In his lyric, “A Fever,” he says,
speaking of the object of his love:
“But yet thou canst not die, I know;
To leave this world behind, is death;
But when thou from this world wilt go,
The whole world vapours with thy breath.
“Or if, when thou, the world’s soul, go’st
It stay, ’tis but thy carcase then.”
And in “An Anatomy of the World” this idea of the death of the world in
the death of a woman is explained at length.
Holding thus to this idea of woman, and striving to differentiate love
from passion, Donne was able to confine his notion of love to the soul;
and through the metaphysical manner of his poetic art he was able to
express this notion in the most perplexing intricacies of thought. As
Dryden has said, “he affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires,
but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign: and perplexes
the minds of the fair sex with the speculations of philosophy, where he
should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softness of
love.”[22] By imitating his style the other lyric poets of the
seventeenth century produced the species of love poems which have
already been analyzed. His skill and his sincerity of aim are lacking in
their verse; and the result was either a weak dilution of his thought or
a striving for his manner in praising a lower conception of love.