“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.”