Classic and Contemporary Poetry
ON THE PLATONIC IDEA, AS IT WAS UNDERSTOOD BY ARISTOTLE, by JOHN MILTON Poem Explanation Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Ye sister powers, who o'er the sacred groves Last Line: A wilder fabulist, go also forth. Subject(s): Plato (428-348 B.c.) | ||||||||
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. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...PLANTONICK LOVE by ABRAHAM COWLEY THE BALLAD OF ISKANDER by JAMES ELROY FLECKER VIRGIDEMIAE: BOOK 5: SATIRE: 3 by JOSEPH HALL MEDITATION by EDWARD HARRY WILLIAM MEYERSTEIN SAYS PLATO by CINCINNATUS HEINE MILLER THE HEAVENLY WAY by EDNA DEAN PROCTOR IN PLATO'S CAVE by KATHLEEN JESSIE RAINE ON A REDBREAST SINGING AT THE GRAVE OF PLATO (IN THE GROVE OF ACADEME) by WILLIAM SHARP |
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