ON THE PLATONIC IDEA, AS IT WAS UNDERSTOOD BY ARISTOTLE by JOHN MILTON

YE sister powers, who o'er the sacred groves
Preside, and thou, fair mother of them all,
Mnemosyne! and thou who, in thy grot
Immense, reclined at leisure, hast in charge
The archives, and the ordinances of Jove,
And dost record the festivals of heaven,
Eternity!--inform us who is He,
That great original by nature chosen
To be the archetype of human kind,
Unchangeable, immortal, with the poles
Themselves coeval, one, yet everywhere,
An image of the god who gave him being?
Twin-brother of the goddess born from Jove,
He dwells not in his father's mind, but, though
Of common nature with ourselves, exists
Apart, and occupies a local home.
Whether, companion of the stars, he spend
Eternal ages, roaming at his will
From sphere to sphere the tenfold heavens; or dwell
On the moon's side that nearest neighbours earth;
Or torpid on the banks of Lethe sit
Among the multitude of souls ordained
To flesh and blood, or whether (as may chance)
That vast and giant model of our kind
In some far distant region of this globe
Sequestered stalk, with lifted head on high
O'ertowering Atlas, on whose shoulders rest
The stars, terrific even to the gods.
Never the Theban seer, whose blindness proved
His best illumination, him beheld
In secret vision: never him the son
Of Pleione, amid the noiseless night
Descending, to the prophet-choir revealed;
Him never knew the Assyrian priest, who yet
The ancestry of Ninus chronicles,
And Belus, and Osiris far-renowned;
Nor even thrice great Hermes, although skilled
So deep in mystery, to the worshippers
Of Isis showed a prodigy like him.
And thou, who hast immortalised the shades
Of Academus,--if the schools received
This monster of the fancy first from thee,--
Either recall at once the banished bards
To thy republic, or, thyself evinced
A wilder fabulist, go also forth.

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!

Other Poems of Interest...