Share:
  Guess poet | Poets | Poets timeline | Isles | Contacts

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)
Work rating: Low


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.
Source

The script ran 0.001 seconds.