PART IV. PLATONIC POETS.

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

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

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

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

I would sing the preëxistency Of human souls and live once o’er again By recollection and quick memory All that is passed since first we all began. But all too shallow be my wits to scan So deep a point and mind too dull to climb So dark a matter. But thou more than man Aread, thou sacred soul of Plotin dear, Tell me what mortals are. Tell what of old they were.

A spark or ray of divinity Clouded with earthly fogs, and clad in clay, A precious drop sunk from eternity Spilt on the ground, or rather slunk away. For then we fell when we ‘gan first t’ essay By stealth of our own selves something to been Uncentering ourselves from our one great stay, Which rupture we new liberty did ween, And from that prank right jolly wits ourselves did deem.

Show fitly how the preëxisting soul Enacts and enters bodies here below And then entire unhurt can leave this moul, In which by sense and motion they may know Better than we what things transacted be Upon the earth, and when they best may show Themselves to friend or foe, their phantasmy Moulding their airy arc to gross consistency.

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

The soul grows clotted by oblivion, Imbodies and embrutes till she quite lose The divine property of her first being; Such as those thick and gloomy shadows damp Oft seen in charnel vaults and sepulchres Lingering and setting by a new made grave As loth to leave the body that it loved.

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

Wert thou that just maid, who once before Forsook the hated earth, O tell me sooth, And cam’st again to visit us once more? Or wert thou that sweet smiling youth? Or any other of that heavenly brood Let down in cloudy throne to do the world some good? Or wert thou of the golden-winged host, Who, having clad thyself in human weed, To earth from thy prefixed seat didst post, And after short abode fly back with speed As if to show what creatures heaven doth breed; Thereby to set the hearts of men on fire, To scorn the sordid world and unto heaven aspire.

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

PREËXISTENCE. IN IMITATION OF MILTON.

Now had th’ archangel trumpet, raised sublime Above the walls of heaven, begun to sound; All æther took the blast and fell beneath Shook with celestial noise; th’ almighty host, Hot with pursuit, and reeking with the blood Of guilty cherubs smeared in sulphurous dust, Pause at the known command of sounding gold. At first they close the wide Tartarean gates, Th’ impenetrable folds on brazen hinge Roll creaking horrible; the din beneath O’ercomes the war of flames, and deafens hell. Then through the solid gloom with nimble wing They cut their shining traces up to light; Returned upon the edge of heavenly day, Where thinnest beams play round the vast obscure And with eternal gleam drives back the night. They find the troops less stubborn, less involved In crime and ruin, barr’d the realms of peace, Yet uncondemned to baleful beats of woe, Doubtful and suppliant; all the plumes of light Moult from their shuddering wings, and sickly fear Shades every face with horror; conscious guilt Rolls in the livid eyeball, and each breast Shakes with the dread of future doom unknown. ’Tis here the wide circumference of heaven Opens in two vast gates, that inward turn Voluminous, on jasper columns hung By geometry divine: they ever glow With living sculptures; they arise by turns To imboss the shining leaves, by turns they set To give succeeding argument their place; In holy hieroglyphics on they move, The gaze of journeying angels, as they pass Oft looking back, and held in deep surprise. Here stood the troops distinct; the cherub guard Unbarred the splendid gates, and in they roll Harmonious; for a vocal spirit sits Within each hinge, and as they onward drive, In just divisions breaks the numerous jars With symphony melodious, such as spheres Involved in tenfold wreaths are said to sound. Out flows a blaze of glory: for on high Towering advanced the moving throne of God.

· · · · ·

Above the throne, th’ ideas heavenly bright Of past, of present, and of coming time, Fixed their immoved abode, and there present An endless landscape of created things To sight celestial, where angelic eyes Are lost in prospect; for the shiny range Boundless and various in its bosom bears Millions of full proportioned worlds, beheld With steadfast eyes, till more arise to view, And further inward scenes start up unknown.

· · · · ·

A vocal thunder rolled the voice of God. “Servants of God! and virtues great in arms, We approve your faithful works, and you return Blessed from the dire pursuits of rebel foes; Resolved, obdurant, they have tried the force Of this right hand, and known almighty power; Transfixed with lightning, down they sunk and fell Into the fiery gulf, and deep they plunge Below the burning waves, to hide their heads.

· · · · ·

“For you, ye guilty throng that lately joined In this sedition, since seduced from good, And caught in trains of guile, by sprites malign Superior in their order; you accept, Trembling, my heavenly clemency and grace. When the long era once has filled its orb, You shall emerge to light and humbly here Again shall bow before his favoring throne, If your own virtue second my decree: But all must have their races first below. See, where below in chaos wondrous deep A speck of light dawns forth, and thence throughout The shades, in many a wreath, my forming power There swiftly turns the burning eddy round, Absorbing all crude matter near its brink; Which next, with subtle motions, takes the form I please to stamp, the seed of embryo worlds All now in embryo, but ere long shall rise Variously scattered in this vast expanse, Involved in winding orbs, until the brims Of outward circles brush the heavenly gates. The middle point a globe of curling fire Shall hold, which round it sheds its genial heat; Where’er I kindle life the motion grows, In all the endless orbs, from this machine; And infinite vicissitudes that roll About the restless centre; for I rear In those meanders turned, a dusty ball, Deformed all o’er with woods, whose shaggy tops Inclose eternal mists, and deadly damps Hover within their boughs, to cloak the light; Impervious scenes of horror, till reformed To fields and grassy dells and flowery meads By your continual pains.... Here Silence sits In folds of wreathy mantling sunk obscure, And in dark fumes bending his drowsy head; An urn he holds, from whence a lake proceeds Wide, flowing gently, smooth and Lethe named; Hither compelled, each soul must drink long draughts Of those forgetful streams, till forms within And all the great ideas fade and die: For if vast thought should play about a mind Inclosed in flesh, and dragging cumbrous life, Fluttering and beating in the mournful cage, It soon would break its gates and wing away: ’Tis therefore my decree, the soul return Naked from off this beach, and perfect blank To visit the new world; and wait to feel Itself in crude consistence closely shut, The dreadful monument of just revenge; Immured by heaven’s own hand, and placed erect On fleeting matter all imprisoned round With walls of clay; the ethereal mould shall bear The chain of members, deafened with an ear, Blinded by eyes, and trammeled by hands. Here anger, vast ambition and disdain, And all the haughty movements rise and fall, As storms of neighboring atoms tear the soul, And hope and love and all the calmer turns Of easy hours, in their gay gilded shapes, With sudden run, skim o’er deluded minds, As matter leads the dance; but one desire Unsatisfied, shall mar ten thousand joys. “The rank of beings, that shall first advance, Drink deep of human life, and long shall stay On this great scene of cares. From all the rest, That longer for the destined body wait, Less penance I expect, and short abode In those pale dreamy kingdoms will content; Each has his lamentable lot, and all On different rocks abide the pains of life. “The pensive spirit takes the lonely grove; Nightly he visits all the sylvan scenes, Where far remote, a melancholy moon Raising her head, serene and shorn of beams, Throws here and there her glimmerings through the trees. The sage shall haunt this solitary ground And view the dismal landscape limned within In horrid shades, mixed with imperfect light. Here Judgment, blinded by delusive sense, Contracted through the cranny of an eye, Shoots up faint languid beams to that dark seat, Wherein the soul, bereaved of native fire, Sets intricate, in misty clouds obscured.

· · · · ·

“Hence far removed, a different being race In cities full and frequent take their seat, Where honor’s crushed, and gratitude oppressed With swelling hopes of gain, that raise within A tempest, and driven onward by success, Can find no bounds. For creatures of a day Stretch their wide cares to ages; full increase Starves their penurious soul, while empty sound Fills the ambitious; _that_ shall ever shrink, Pining with endless cares, while _this_ shall swell To tympany enormous. Bright in arms Here shines the hero, out he fiercely leads A martial throng, his instruments of rage, To fill the world with death, and thin mankind.

· · · · ·

“There savage nature in one common lies And feels its share of hunger, care, and pain, Cheated by flying prey; and now they tear Their panting flesh; and deeply, darkly quaff Of human woe, even when they rudely sip The flowing stream, or draw the savory pulp Of nature’s freshest viands; fragrant fruits Enjoyed with trembling, and in danger sought. “But where the appointed limits of a law Fences the general safety of the world, No greater quiet reigns: the blended loads Of punishment and crime deform the world, And give no rest to man; with pangs and throes He enters on the stage; prophetic tears And infant cries prelude his future woes; And all is one continual scene of gulf Till the sad sable curtain falls in death.

· · · · ·

“Then the gay glories of the living world Shall cast their empty varnish and retire Out of his feeble views; the shapeless root Of wild imagination dance and play Before his eyes obscure; till all in death Shall vanish, and the prisoner enlarged, Regains the flaming borders of the sky.” He ended. Peals of thunder rend the heavens, And chaos, from the bottom turned, resounds. The mighty clangor; all the heavenly host Approve the high decree, and loud they sing Eternal justice; while the guilty troops, Sad with their doom, but sad without despair, Fall fluttering down to Lethe’s lake, and there For penance, and the destined body wait.

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

“Like the world’s rejected guest.”

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

To the deep, to the deep, Down, down! Through the shade of sleep, Through the cloudy strife Of Death and of Life, Through the veil and the bar Of things which seem and are, Even to the steps of the remotest throne, Down, down!

While the sound whirls around, Down, down! As the fawn draws the hound, As the lightning the vapor, As a weak moth, the taper; Death, despair; love, sorrow; Time both; to-day, to-morrow; As steel obeys the spirit of the stone, Down, down!

In the depth of the deep, Down, down! Like the veiled lightning asleep, Like the spark nursed in embers, The last look Love remembers, Like a diamond which shines On the dark wealth of mines, A spell is treasured but for thee alone, Down, down!

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

I am the daughter of earth and water And the nursling of the sky, I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores, I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain when with never a stain The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.

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

Ye gentle visitants of calm thought, Moods like the memories of happier earth Which come arrayed in thoughts of little worth Like stars in clouds by weak winds enwrought.

THE RETREAT.

BY HENRY VAUGHAN.

Happy those early days when I Shined in my angel-infancy, Before I understood this place Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy aught But a white celestial thought; When yet I had not walked above A mile or two from my first love, And, looking back, at that short space, Could see a glimpse of his bright face; When on some gilded cloud or flower My gazing soul would dwell an hour, And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity; Before I taught my tongue to wound My conscience with a sinful sound; Or had the black art to dispense A several sin to every sense, But felt through all this flashy dress Bright shoots of everlastingness.

Oh, how I long to travel back And tread again that ancient track! That I might once more reach that plain Where first I left my glorious train; From whence the enlightened spirit sees That shady city of palm-trees. But ah! my soul with too much stay Is drunk and staggers in the way. Some men a forward motion love, But I by backward steps would move, And when this dust falls to the urn, In that state I came, return.

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

To vision profounder Man’s spirit must dive; His aye-rolling orb At no goal will arrive; The heavens that now draw him With sweetness untold, Once found for new heavens He spurneth the old.

Eterne alteration Now follows, now flies, And under pain, pleasure— Under pleasure, pain lies. Love works at the centre, Heart-heaving alway; Forth speed the strong pulses To the borders of day.

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

A HYMN ON HEAVEN.

Ye starry mansions, hail! my native skies! Here in my happy, preëxistent state (A spotless mind) I led the life of Gods, But passing, I salute you, and advance To yonder brighter realms, allowed access. Hail, splendid city of the almighty king, Celestial salem, situate above, etc.

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

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

“My Ain Countrie.”

“This world where grief and sin abideth, Is not the Christian’s native clime.”

“The home-land, blessed home-land.”

“Jerusalem, my happy home.”

VI. REINCARNATION AMONG THE ANCIENTS.

The ancient theologists and priests testify that the soul is conjoined to the body through a certain punishment, and that it is buried in this body as in a sepulchre.—PHILOLAUS, (a Pythagorean.)

Search thou the path of the soul, whence she came, or what way, after serving the body, by joining work with sacred speed, thou shalt raise her again to the same state whence she fell.—ZOROASTER.

Death has no power th’ immortal soul to slay, That, when its present body turns to clay, Seeks a fresh home, and with unlessened might Inspires another frame with life and light. So I myself (well I the past recall), When the fierce Greeks begirt Troy’s holy wall, Was brave Euphorbus: and in conflict drear Poured forth my blood beneath Atrides’ spear. The shield this arm did bear I lately saw In Juno’s shrine, a trophy of that war. PYTHAGORAS, in DRYDEN’S _Ovid_.

He [Plato] spoke of Him The lone, eternal One, who dwells above, And of the soul’s untraceable descent From that high fount of spirit, through all the grades Of intellectual being, till it mix With atoms vague, corruptible and dark. Nor yet ev’n thus, though sunk in earthly dross, Corrupted all, nor its ethereal touch Quite lost, but tasting of the fountain still As some bright river, which has rolled along Through meads of flowery light and mines of gold When poured at length into the dusky deep Disdains to take at once its briny taint, But keeps unchanged awhile the lustrous tinge Or balmy freshness of the scenes it left. MOORE.

VI. REINCARNATION AMONG THE ANCIENTS.

The origin of the philosophy of reincarnation is prehistoric. It antedates the remotest antiquity all over the world, and appears to be cognate with mankind, springing up spontaneously as a necessary corollary of the immortality of the soul; for its undiminished sway has been wellnigh universal outside of Christendom. In the earliest dawn of Mother India it was firmly established. The infancy of Egypt found it dominant on the Nile. It was at home in Greece long before Pythagoras. The most ancient beginnings of Mexico and Peru knew it as the faith of their fathers.

I. In sketching the course of this thought among the men of old, the first attention belongs to India. Brahmanism, the most primitive form of this faith, has gone through vast changes during the four thousand years of history. The initial form of it, dating back into the remotest mists of antiquity and descending to the first chapters of authentic chronology, was an ideally simple nature-worship. The Rig Veda and the oldest sacred hymns display the beauty of this adoration for every phase of nature, centering with especial fondness upon light as the supreme power, and upon the cow as the favorite animal. Professor Wilson’s and Max Müller’s translations have opened to the English race the charming thought of this primordial people, whose great child-souls found objects of reverence in all things. There were no distinct gods, but everything was divine, and through all they saw the flow of ever-changing life. Gradually an ecclesiastical system climbed up around this religion, clothing, stifling, and at last burying the vital organism, until Sakya Muni’s reaction started Buddhism into vigorous growth as the beautiful protest against the disfigured and decayed form. About Buddhism, too, there has arisen a heavy weight of lifeless ritual, but every breath of life with which the slumbering mother and daughter continue their existence is perfumed with the roseattar of reincarnation. How they have since continued to disseminate the idea of reincarnation is suggested in