The Poetry Corner

On the Platonic 'Ideal' as it was Understood by Aristotle.

By John Milton

Ye sister Pow'rs who o'er the sacred groves Preside, and, Thou, fair mother of them all Mnemosyne,1 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,2 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 Lethe3 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,4 whose blindness proved His best illumination, Him beheld In secret vision; never him the son Of Pleione,5 amid the noiseless night Descending, to the prophet-choir reveal'd; Him never knew th'Assyrian priest,6 who yet The ancestry of Ninus7 chronicles, And Belus, and Osiris far-renown'd; Nor even Thrice-great Hermes,7 although skill'd So deep in myst'ry, to the worshippers Of Isis show'd a prodigy like Him. And thou,8 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.