William Cowper - On The Platonic `Ideal` As It Was Understood By Aristotle. (Translated From Milton)William Cowper - On The Platonic `Ideal` As It Was Understood By Aristotle. (Translated From Milton)
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Ye sister Pow`rs 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 ord`nances of Jove,
And dost record the festivals of heav`n,
Eternity!--Inform us who is He,
That great Original by Nature chos`n
To be the Archetype of Human-kind,
Unchangeable, Immortal, with the poles
Themselves coaeval, One, yet ev`rywhere,
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 heav`ns, or dwell
On the moon`s side that nearest neighbours Earth,
Or torpid on the banks of Lethe sit
Among the multitude of souls ordair`d
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
Sequester`d stalk, with lifted head on high
O`ertow`ring 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 reveal`d;
Him never knew th` Assyrian priest, who yet
The ancestry of Ninus chronicles,
And Belus, and Osiris far-renown`d;
Nor even Thrice-great Hermes, although skill`d
So deep in myst`ry, to the worshippers
Of Isis show`d a prodigy like Him.
And thou, who hast immortalized the shades
Of Academus, if the school received
This monster of the Fancy first from Thee,
Either recall at once the banish`d bards
To thy Republic, or, thyself evinc`d
A wilder Fabulist, go also forth.
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