Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/52

22 him to the side of the ship Republic and to drop him overboard, as the Quaker repulsed the boarder, with the remark, "Friend, thee has no business here!" But this is Plato defying his natal goddess in a passing ascetic mood; Plato, in whose self the poet and philosopher were one indeed, having ever since been trying, like the two parts of his archetypal man, to find again so perfect a union. In his more general mood he atones for such wantonness, reiterating again and again that the poet is a seer, possessed of all secrets and guided by an inspiring spirit; that without his second sight, his interpretation of the divine ideas symbolized by substance and action, his mission would be fruitless.

Those who take this higher view revere the name From Plato to Emerson. of Plato, though sometimes looking beyond him to the more eastern East, whence such occult wisdom is believed to flow,—to such sayings as that ascribed to Zoroaster, "Poets are standing transporters; their employment consists in speaking to the Father and to Matter, in provoking apparent copies of unapparent natures, and thus inscribing things unapparent in the apparent fabric of the world."

Cicero, deeply read in Plato, could not conceive Cicero. of a poet's producing verse of grand import and perfect rhythm without some heavenly inbreathing of the mind. The soul's highest prerogative was to contemplate the order of celestial things