Get the full ebook with Bonus Features for a Better Reading Experience on ebookmeta.

com

Insight Guides Texas Travel Guide with Free eBook

6th Edition Insight Guides

https://ebookmeta.com/product/insight-guides-texas-travel-
guide-with-free-ebook-6th-edition-insight-guides/

OR CLICK HERE

DOWLOAD NOW

Download more ebook instantly today at https://ebookmeta.com

 Recommended digital products (PDF, EPUB, MOBI) that
you can download immediately if you are interested.

Insight Guides Germany Travel Guide with Free Ebook 6th

Edition Insight Guides

https://ebookmeta.com/product/insight-guides-germany-travel-guide-
with-free-ebook-6th-edition-insight-guides/

ebookmeta.com

Insight Guides Pocket Switzerland Travel Guide with Free

EBook 6th Edition Insight Guides

https://ebookmeta.com/product/insight-guides-pocket-switzerland-
travel-guide-with-free-ebook-6th-edition-insight-guides/

ebookmeta.com

Insight Guides England Travel Guide with Free eBook

Insight Guides

https://ebookmeta.com/product/insight-guides-england-travel-guide-
with-free-ebook-insight-guides/

ebookmeta.com

Sarfraz Zaidi MD Graves' Disease And Hyperthyroidism: What

You Must Know Before They Zap Your Thyroid With
Radioactive Iodine 1st Edition Sarfraz Zaidi Md
https://ebookmeta.com/product/sarfraz-zaidi-md-graves-disease-and-
hyperthyroidism-what-you-must-know-before-they-zap-your-thyroid-with-
radioactive-iodine-1st-edition-sarfraz-zaidi-md/
ebookmeta.com
The English King England The Second Viking Age 1st Edition
M J Porter

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-english-king-england-the-second-
viking-age-1st-edition-m-j-porter/

ebookmeta.com

Principles of Managerial Finance, Brief (What's New in

Finance) 8th Edition Lawrence Gitman

https://ebookmeta.com/product/principles-of-managerial-finance-brief-
whats-new-in-finance-8th-edition-lawrence-gitman/

ebookmeta.com

Kubernetes: Up & Running: Dive into the Future of

Infrastructure, 3rd Edition Brendan Burns

https://ebookmeta.com/product/kubernetes-up-running-dive-into-the-
future-of-infrastructure-3rd-edition-brendan-burns/

ebookmeta.com

Handbook of Child and Adolescent Anxiety Disorders Dean

Mckay

https://ebookmeta.com/product/handbook-of-child-and-adolescent-
anxiety-disorders-dean-mckay/

ebookmeta.com

Mental Health and Social Withdrawal in Contemporary Japan

1st Edition Nicolas Tajan

https://ebookmeta.com/product/mental-health-and-social-withdrawal-in-
contemporary-japan-1st-edition-nicolas-tajan/

ebookmeta.com
Pali for New Learners, Book II: How to read it J. R.
Bhaddacak

https://ebookmeta.com/product/pali-for-new-learners-book-ii-how-to-
read-it-j-r-bhaddacak/

ebookmeta.com
 HOW TO USE THIS E-BOOK

Getting around the e-book

This Insight Guide e-book is designed to give you inspiration for
your visit to Alaska, as well as comprehensive planning advice to
make sure you have the best travel experience. The guide begins
with our selection of Top Attractions, as well as our Editor’s Choice
categories of activities and experiences. Detailed features on history,
people and culture paint a vivid portrait of contemporary life in
Alaska. The extensive Places chapters give a complete guide to all
the sights and areas worth visiting. The Travel Tips provide full
information on getting around, activities from culture to shopping to
sport, plus a wealth of practical information to help you plan your
trip.
In the Table of Contents and throughout this e-book you will see
hyperlinked references. Just tap a hyperlink once to skip to the
section you would like to read. Practical information and listings are
also hyperlinked, so as long as you have an external connection to
the internet, you can tap a link to go directly to the website for more
information.

Maps
All key attractions and sights in Alaska are numbered and cross-
referenced to high-quality maps. Wherever you see the reference
[map] just tap this to go straight to the related map. You can also
double-tap any map for a zoom view.
Images
You’ll find hundreds of beautiful high-resolution images that capture
the essence of Alaska. Simply double-tap on an image to see it full-
screen.

About Insight Guides

Insight Guides have more than 40 years’ experience of publishing
high-quality, visual travel guides. We produce 400 full-colour titles, in
both print and digital form, covering more than 200 destinations
across the globe, in a variety of formats to meet your different
needs.
Insight Guides are written by local authors, whose expertise is
evident in the extensive historical and cultural background features.
Each destination is carefully researched by regional experts to
ensure our guides provide the very latest information. All the reviews
in Insight Guides are independent; we strive to maintain an
impartial view. Our reviews are carefully selected to guide you to the
best places to eat, go out and shop, so you can be confident that
when we say a place is special, we really mean it.
© 2021 Apa Digital AG
License edition © Apa Publications Ltd UK
Table of Contents
Texas’s Top 10 Attractions
Editor’s Choice
Introduction: Where Big is Beautiful
The Lone Star State
Decisive Dates
Six Flags Over Texas
Modern Times
Texans
The Texas Rangers
Don’t Fence Me In
Musical Traditions
Texan Architecture
Introduction: Places
Dallas
Fort Worth
Central Texas
Austin
Hill Country
San Antonio
Insight: The Crucial Role of the Spanish Missions
Houston
Insight: Houston’s Space Center
East Texas
The Gulf Coast
Rio Grande Valley
Del Rio To Laredo
El Paso
Big Bend Country
Big Bend National Park
Insight: Wildlife in Texas
West Texas
Texas Parks
Transportation
A-Z: A Handy Summary of Practical Information
Further Reading
TEXAS’S TOP 10 ATTRACTIONS
 Top Attraction 1

The Alamo, San Antonio. The birthplace of the revolution that led
to the nine-year Texas Republic in 1836, this somber Spanish
mission chapel is the heart of Texas pride in exuberant San Antonio.
For more information, click here.
iStock
 Top Attraction 2

The River Walk, San Antonio. Stroll or take a boat tour along an
enchanting European-style riverside promenade in downtown San
Antonio that captures the lights, color, and history of the largest
Hispanic city in Texas. For more information, click here.
Carol M. Highsmith/Library of Congress
 Top Attraction 3

Nacogdoches, East Texas. Its Caddo Indian name betrays the

ancient origins of this attractive historic town, home to a state
university, nature trails, museums, antique stores, and nearby Caddo
Mounds State Historic Site. For more information, click here.
Travel Texas
 Top Attraction 4

The Menil Collection and Rothko Chapel, Houston. Passionate

art collectors the Menils’ personal collection of art is displayed in an
intimate setting in a stunning building by Renzo Piano. The interfaith
chapel contains a collection of paintings by Mark Rothko. For more
information, click here.
Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau
Top Attraction 5
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
(Made pure of mortal spots which did it stain,
And endless, which even death cannot impair),
I place on Him who will it not disdain.”
(Poems, Second Pt. S. x
This is a note heard in other poets where heavenly love is described as
naturally growing out of earthly love when the right idea of the nature of
the object of that lower passion has been learned. Thus in Milton it is
taught that the love of woman must not be passion, but must be a scale
by which the mind may mount to the heavenly world. The passion which
Adam feels for the loveliness that hedges the presence of Eve—
“when I approach
Her loveliness, so absolute she seems
And in herself complete, so well to know
Her own, that what she wills to do or say
Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best:

· · · · ·

and, to consummate all,

Greatness of mind and nobleness their seat
Build in her loveliest, and create an awe
About her, as a guard angelic placed—”
(VIII. 546–55
is described by Raphael “with contracted brow” as merely transported
touch, in reality the same feeling shared by the beasts of the field. (VIII.
582.) Raphael, accordingly, directs Adam to love only the rational in
Eve’s nature, for true love has his seat in the reason.
“What higher in her society thou find’st
Attractive, human, rational, love still:
In loving thou dost well, in passion not,
Wherein true Love consists not. Love refines
The thoughts, and heart enlarges—hath his seat
In Reason, and is judicious, is the scale
By which to Heavenly Love thou may’st ascend,
Not sunk in carnal pleasure.”
(VIII. 586–59
In Phineas Fletcher’s sixth “Piscatorie Eclogue,” where there is a long
discussion on the nature of love, human love is shown to be a love
merely of the passing charms of woman: of her form, which will decay;
of her voice, which is but empty wind; and of her color, which can move
only the sense. (Stz. 20–22.) No attempt is made to describe the nature
of the higher love, but a simple exhortation to raise this love of woman
to a love of the “God of fishers” closes the account.
“Then let thy love mount from these baser things,
And to the Highest Love and worth aspire:
Love’s born of fire, fitted with mounting wings;
That at his highest he might winde him higher;
Base love, that to base earth so basely clings!

· · · · ·

“Raise then thy prostrate love with tow’ring thought;

And clog it not in chains and prison here:
The God of fishers, deare thy love hath bought:
Most deare He loves; for shame, love thou as deare.”
(Stz. 24, 2
Heavenly love, then, whether springing from the desire within the
soul to see wisdom in her beauty, or from a desire to raise the mind
from a love of earth to the intelligible world, or from the desire to find a
worthy object in the love of the rational in woman, when freed from all
the grossness of physical passion, is a contemplative love of a less
perishing beauty than can be found on earth. And just as the transition
was easy from the love which God himself knows to the soul’s love of
God, so was the change from the love of soul for a higher reality than
earthly beauty to the immortal love of God for the soul. Thus in Sidney’s
sonnet the subtle change is effected.
“Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust,
And thou my mind aspire to higher things:
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:
Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.
Draw in thy beames, and humble all thy might,
To that sweet yoke, where lasting freedomes be:
Which breakes the clowdes and opens forth the light,
That doth both shine and give us sight to see.
O take fast hold, let that light be thy guide,
In this small course which birth drawes out to death,
And thinke how evill becommeth him to slide,
Who seeketh heav’n, and comes of heav’nly breath.
Then farewell world, thy uttermost I see,
Eternall Love maintaine thy life in me.”
(S.
The appeal which Platonism made to the English poets in its doctrine
of a heavenly love was through its power to stir the minds with a deep
sense of that beauty which God was understood to possess. The
application of the principle of beauty to God resulted in a note of joy
and in an exaltation of soul in the religious mind, which, after forsaking
the beauty of this world of sense, could enjoy the great principle of
beauty in the beatific vision of God. Such a strain of joy may be heard in
Drummond, in John Norris, and even in the quiet lyrics of George
Herbert.
The sight of God in His absolute beauty is considered by these poets
as the end of the soul’s endeavor. According to John Norris God is the
divine excellence,
“Which pleases either mind or sense,
Tho’ thee by different names we call!
Search Nature through, there still wilt be
The Sum of all that’s good in her Variety.”

He thus exhorts the soul to rise to a sight of Him.

“But do not thou, my Soul, fixt here remain,
All streams of Beauty here below
Do from that immense Ocean flow,
And thither they should lead again.
Trace then these Streams, till thou shalt be
At length o’erwhelm’d in Beauty’s boundless Sea.”
(“Beauty,” stz. 4, 1
According to Drummond, the one “choicest bliss” of life is the
possession of God’s beauty as a burning passion within the soul. In “An
Hymn of True Happiness” he teaches that supreme felicity does not
consist in the enjoyment of earth’s treasures, of sensuous beauty, or of
other sensual delights, and not even in knowledge and fame.
“No, but blest life is this,
With chaste and pure desire,
To turn unto the loadstar of all bliss,
On God the mind to rest,
Burnt up with sacred fire,
Possessing him, to be by him possesst.”

(ll. 61–66.)

“A love which, while it burns

The soul with fairest beams,
In that uncreated sun the soul it turns,
And makes such beauty prove,
That, if sense saw her gleams,
All lookers-on would pine and die for love.”
(ll. 97–10
The essential nature of this beatific vision is described either as a
sense of eternal rest or of eternal joy. In Norris’s “Prospect,” the soul is
preparing for the great change that will come when it is free from the
body; and its greatest change is described as a sight of “the only Fair.”
“Now for the greatest Change prepare,
To see the only Great, the only Fair,
Vail now thy feeble eyes, gaze and be blest;
Here all thy Turns and Revolutions cease,
Here’s all Serenity and Peace:
Thou’rt to the Center come, the native seat of rest.
Here’s now no further change nor need there be;
When One shall be Variety.”
(Stz.
In Drummond’s “Teares on the Death of Mœliades” the joy of the
departed soul is repeatedly emphasized as a rest in the enjoyment of
God’s beauty. Thus, in closing, the dead is addressed:
“Rest, blessed spright, rest satiate with the sight
Of him whose beams doth dazzle and delight,
Life of all lives, cause of each other cause,
The sphere and centre where the mind doth pause;
Narcissus of himself, himself the well,
Lover, and beauty, that doth all excel.
Rest, happy ghost, and wonder in that glass
Where seen is all that shall be, is, or was,
While shall be, is, or was do pass away,
And nought remain but an eternal day:
For ever rest.”
(ll. 179–18
The note of joy in the beatific vision is heard in Drummond and
Norris. In Drummond earthly love is a care, a war within our nature;
but love
“Among those sprights above
Which see their Maker’s face,
It a contentment is, a quiet peace,
A pleasure void of grief, a constant rest,
Eternal joy which nothing can molest.”
(“Urania,” Madrigal
And again:
“O blest abode! O happy dwelling-place
Where visibly th’ Invisible doth reign!
Blest people, who do see true beauty’s face,
With whose dark shadows he but earth doth deign,
All joy is but annoy, all concord strife,
Match’d with your endlesse bliss and happy life.”
(“Urania,” S
In Norris’s “Seraphick Love” a more violent strain is detected. He has
forsaken the beauty of earth because he has seen a fairer beauty in
contemplation, and to this source of all good and beauty he thus
addresses the close of his poem.
“To thee, thou only Fair, my Soul aspires
With Holy Breathings, languishing Desires
To thee m’ inamour’d, panting Heart does move,
By Efforts of Ecstatic Love.
How do thy glorious streams of Light
Refresh my intellectual sight!
Tho broken, and strain’d through a Skreen
Of envious Flesh that stands between!
When shall m’ imprison’d Soul be free,
That she thy Native Uncorrected Light may see,
And gaze upon thy Beatifick Face to all Eternity?”
(Stz.
The violence of passion in these poets is absent in George Herbert,
and even the presence of the beatific vision, as a conscious experience of
the soul known after the long travail of its search for beauty, is not in
the least discernible. Still, the conviction that there is a higher beauty
than that seen on earth, and that in truth lies this beauty, is felt beneath
the mildness of Herbert’s devotion. In two sonnets, which he sent to his
mother in 1608, he laments the decay of any true love for God among
the poets, and contrasts the beauty of God with the beauties of the
amorists. To him the beauty of God lies in the discovery.
“Such poor invention burns in their [the amorists’] low minde,
Whose fire is wild, and doth not upward go
To praise, and on Thee, Lord, some ink bestow.
Open the bones, and you shall nothing finde
In the best face but filth; when, Lord, in Thee
The beauty lies in the discoverie.”
(S
He is, accordingly, content to sing the praises of God.
“Let foolish lovers, if they will love dung,
With canvas, not with arras, clothe their shame;
Let Follie speak in her own native tongue:
True Beautie dwells on high; ours in a flame
But borrow’d thence to light us thither;
Beautie and beauteous words should go together.”
(“The Forerunners,” ll. 25–3
So intimately has this notion of the spiritual nature of true beauty
blended with the simple experience of his devotional life that he can ask
“Is there in truth no beautie?
Is all good structure in a winding-stair?
May no lines passe, except they do their dutie
Not to a true, but painted chair?

· · · · ·

Must purling streams refresh a lover’s loves?

Must all be vail’d while he that reades divines,
Catching the sense at two removes?”[7]

As for himself, he says:

“I envie no man’s nightingale or spring;
Nor let them punish me with loss of rhyme,
Who plainly say, My God, my King.”
(“Jordan
In that truth he found his beauty.
Platonism, then, came as a direct appeal to the religious mind of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which was so constituted that the
element of philosophic revery was blended most naturally with a strain
of pure devotional love. Although the ultimate postulates of that
philosophy were intellectual principles, they were such as could be
grasped by the soul only in its deep passion of love for spiritual beauty.
The condemnation which Baxter passes upon other philosophies could
not be brought with truth against Platonism. “In short,” he says, “I am
an enemy of their philosophy that vilify sense.... The Scripture that saith
of God that He is life and light, saith also that He is love, and love is
complacence, and complacence is joy; and to say God is infinite,
essential love and joy is a better notion than with Cartesians and
Cocceians to say that God and angels and spirits are but a thought or an
idea. What is Heaven to us if there be no love and joy?”[8] This desire of
life and love, along its upper levels of thought, was satisfied by
Platonism; it enabled the poets to forecast the life of the soul in heaven,
and of its anticipation on earth as a love of beauty.
There was a strong tendency, however, throughout this period of
religious poetry, toward a phase of devotional love which may be called
erotic mysticism, or that love for Christ which is characterized less by
admiration and more by tenderness and mere delight in the pure
sensuous experience of love. Contemplation of Christ’s divine nature as
essential beauty is totally absent from this passion. Christ as the object
of this love is conceived only as the perfection of physical beauty; and
the response within the soul of the lover is that of mere sensuous delight
either in the sight of his personal beauties or in the realization of the
union with him. This strain of religious devotion is heard in Herbert, in
Vaughan, and Crashaw. In Herbert, who confessed that he entered the
service of the church in order to be like Christ, “by making humility
lovely,”—a confession which breathes pure emotion,—there was joined
so sensuous a strain that “he seems to rejoice in the thoughts of that
word Jesus, and say, that the adding these words, my Master, to it, and
often repetition of them, seemed to perfume his mind, and leave an
oriental fragrancy in his very breath.”[9] The spectacle of the crucified
Saviour of man was especially influential in keeping this strain of
mystical devotion alive; and the minds of these poets are continually
dwelling upon the beauty of his mangled hands and feet. In a nature so
eminently intellectual as John Donne’s, this strain of feeling is still
present, and in his explanation of the grounds for such a love is found
an excellent account of its varying phases. In one of his sermons he
says:
“I love my Saviour, as he is the Lord, he that studies my salvation: and
as Christ, made a person able to work my salvation; but when I see him
in the third notion, Jesus, accomplishing my salvation, by an actual
death, I see those hands stretched out, that stretched out the heavens,
and those feet racked, to which they that racked them are footstools: I
hear him, from whom his nearest friends fled, pray for his enemies, and
him, whom his Father forsook, not forsake his brethren: I see him that
clothes this body with his creatures, or else it would wither, and clothes
this soul with his righteousness, or else it would perish, hang naked
upon the cross; ... when I conceit, when I contemplate my Saviour thus,
I love the Lord, and there is reverent adoration in that love, I love
Christ, and there is a mysterious adoration in that love, but I love Jesus,
and there is a tender compassion in that love....” (Works, II. 181.)
Whenever Platonism enters into this tender passion it always elevates
the emotion into a higher region, where the more intellectual or
spiritual nature of Christ or God is the object of contemplation; and it
does this by affording the poets a conception of the object of the soul’s
highest love, as a philosophical principle, whether of beauty, of good, or
of true being.
The first way by which this elevation of a purely sensuous passion into
a higher region was effected was through the Platonic conception of the
“idea.” Plato had taught that in love the mind should pass from a sight
of the objects of beauty through ever widening circles of abstraction to
the contemplation of absolute beauty in its idea. This can be known only
by the soul, and is the only real beauty. Spenser’s “Hymne of Heavenly
Love” is the best example of the application of this idea to the love of
Christ. In this poem he sings the praise of Christ as the God of Love. He
finds the chief manifestation of Christ’s love in his sacrifice. At first he
treats this as a spectacle to move the eye. He dwells upon the mangling
of Christ’s body (ll. 241–247), and exhorts the beholder to
“bleede in every vaine,
At sight of his most sacred heavenly corse.”
(ll. 251–25
But later, instead of calling upon the beholder to lift up his “heavie
clouded eye” to behold such a manifestation of mercy (ll. 226–227), he
directs him to lift up his mind and meditate upon the author of his
salvation (l. 258). Christ’s love then will burn all earthly desire away by
the power of
“that celestiall beauties blaze,”
(l. 28
whose glory dazes the eye but illumines the spirit. And then, when this
final stage of refinement is past, the ravished soul of the beholder shall
have a sight not of
“his most sacred heavenly corse”
(l. 25
but of the very idea of his pure glory.
“Then shall thy ravisht soule inspired bee
With heavenly thoughts, farre above humane skill,
And thy bright radiant eyes shall plainely see
Th’ Idee of his pure glorie present still,
Before thy face, that all thy spirits shall fill
With sweet enragement of celestiall love,
Kindled through sight of those faire things above.”
(ll. 284–29
The “Hymne,” which celebrates the life of Christ on earth as a man
among men, closes, as it had begun, with the mind in the presence of
heavenly beauty.
In Phineas Fletcher the term “idea” is not used, but the habit of
thought is identical with that of Spenser’s. Christ is to be seen by the
soul, not in his bodily form, but in his “first beautie” and “true
majestie.” In the passage where these expressions occur Fletcher is
showing the manner of the love we should bestow upon Christ for that
which he has shown to us. He says that the only adequate return is to
give back to Christ the love he has given to us. He then prays that Christ
will inflame man with his glorious ray in order that he may rise above a
love of earthly things into heaven.
“So we beholding with immortall eye
The glorious picture of Thy heav’nly face,
In His first beautie and true Majestie,
May shake from our dull souls these fetters base;
And mounting up to that bright crystal sphere,
Whence Thou strik’st all the world with shudd’ring fear,
May not be held by earth, nor hold vile earth so deare.”
(“The Purple Island,” VI. 7
In Crashaw’s “In the Glorious Epiphanie of Our Lord God,” the
elevation of the subject from a sensuous image into an object of pure
contemplation is effected by conceiving Christ’s nature as that of true
being according to the Platonic notion. The first image brought before
the mind is that of the Christ child’s face.
“Bright Babe! Whose awfull beautyes make
The morn incurr a sweet mistake;
For Whom the officious Heavns devise
To disinheritt the sun’s rise:
Delicately to displace
The day, and plant it fairer in Thy face.”
(ll. 1–
Soon, however, under this image of the face appears the hidden
conception of Christ as true being unchanging and everywhere present.
For Christ is addressed as
“All-circling point! all-centring sphear!
The World’s one, round, aeternall year:
Whose full and all-unwrinkled face
Nor sinks nor swells with time or place;
But every where and every while
Is one consistent, solid smile.”
(ll. 26–
The poem, then, which had begun with a recognition of the beauty of the
Babe’s eyes in whose beauty the East had come to seek itself, ends in a
desire not to know what may be seen with the eyes, but to press on,
upward to a purely intellectual object,—Christ in heaven.
“Thus we, who when with all the noble powres
That (at Thy cost) are call’d not vainly, ours:
We vow to make brave way
Upwards, and presse on for the pure intelligentiall prey.”
(ll. 220–22
In those passages in Henry More, where the mystic union of the soul
with Christ or God is symbolized as a sensuous experience, the elevating
power of Platonism is noticeable in the progression of the poet’s mind
out of this lower plane into a higher region of pure thought. Thus in
“Psychathanasia” the advance is made from a treatment of the
communion, which the blest have with Christ in their partaking His
body and blood, to a contemplation of the beauty of God. In this union,
which is shared by those
“whose souls deiform summitie
Is waken’d in this life, and so to God
Are nearly joynd in a firm Unitie,”
(III. i. 3
the true believers grow incorporate with Christ.
“Christ is the sunne that by his chearing might
Awakes our higher rayes to joyn with his pure light.

“And when he hath that life elicited,

He gives his own dear body and his bloud
To drink and eat. Thus dayly we are fed
Unto eternall life. Thus do we bud,
True heavenly plants, suck in our lasting food
From the first spring of life, incorporate
Into the higher world (as erst I show’d
Our lower rayes the soul to subjugate
To this low world) we fearlesse sit above all fate,

“Safely that kingdomes glory contemplate,

O’erflow with joy by a full sympathie
With that worlds spright, and blesse our own estate,
Praising the fount of all felicitie,
The lovely light of the blest Deitie.
Vain mortals think on this, and raise your mind
Above the bodies life; strike through the skie
With piercing throbs and sighs, that you may find
His face. Base fleshly fumes your drowsie eyes thus blind.”
(III. i. 31–3
In Giles Fletcher’s “Christ’s Triumph after Death” the most elaborate
attempt is made to convey the idea of the blessedness of the union of the
soul with God through the pleasure of mere sense and at the same time
to show how the object with which the soul is joined is in every respect a
super-sensible entity. At first the blessedness of the soul’s life in heaven
is presented both as a pleasurable enjoyment of the sense of sight, of
hearing, and even that of smell, and as a more spiritual pleasure in the
exercise of the faculties of understanding and will. Speaking of the joy of
those souls that ever hold
“Their eyes on Him, whose graces manifold
The more they doe behold, the more they would behold,”

Fletcher says:
“Their sight drinkes lovely fires in at their eyes,
Their braine sweet incense with fine breath accloyes,
That on God’s sweating altar burning lies;
Their hungrie eares feede on the heav’nly noyse,
That angels sing, to tell their untould joyes;
Their understanding, naked truth; their wills
The all, and selfe-sufficient Goodnesse, fills:
That nothing here is wanting, but the want of ills.”
(Stz. 3
Here the progression in the scale of pleasures is from those of the senses
to those of the mind.
But Fletcher presents this union as even a more intimate experience
of the soul. His is the most elaborate attempt in English poetry to
describe the nature of the participation of the soul in the beauty of the
ultimate reality, according to the Platonic notion of the participation of
an object in its idea. After three stanzas descriptive of the state of
absolute freedom from cares of life which reigns in heaven (stz. 35–37),
Fletcher passes on to a description of God—the “Idea Beatificall,” as he
names Him—in accordance with the Platonic notion of the highest
principle, The One:
“In midst of this citie cælestiall,
Whear the Eternall Temple should have rose,
Light’ned the Idea Beatificall:
End, and beginning of each thing that growes;
Whose selfe no end, nor yet beginning knowes;
That hath no eyes to see, nor ears to heare;
Yet sees, and heares, and is all-eye, all-eare;
That nowhear is contain’d, and yet is every whear:

“Changer of all things, yet immutable;

Before and after all, the first and last;
That, mooving all, is yet immoveable;
Great without quantitie: in Whose forecast
Things past are present, things to come are past;
Swift without motion; to Whose open eye
The hearts of wicked men unbrested lie;
At once absent and present to them, farre, and nigh.”
(Stz. 39–4
He then goes on to explain what the Idea is not. It is nothing that can be
known by sense. It is no flaming lustre, no harmony of sounds, no
ambrosial feast for the appetite, no odor, no soft embrace, nor any
sensual pleasure. And yet within the soul of the beholder it is known as
an inward feast, a harmony, a light, a sound, a sweet perfume, and
entire embrace. Thus he writes:
“It is no flaming lustre, made of light;
No sweet concent, as well-tim’d harmonie;
Ambrosia, for to feast the appetite,
Or flowrie odour, mixt with spicerie;
No soft embrace, or pleasure bodily;
And yet it is a kinde of inward feast,
A harmony, that sounds within the brest,
An odour, light, embrace, in which the soule doth rest.

“A heav’nly feast, no hunger can consume;

A light unseene, yet shines in every place;
A sound, no time can steale; a sweet perfume
No winds can scatter; an intire embrace
That no satietie can ere unlace.”
(Stz. 41–4
Such was the powerful hold of the doctrines of Platonism upon the
minds of these religious poets. Strong as were the forces leading them
into a degenerate form of Christian love, these were overcome by the
one fundamental conception of Platonism that the highest love the soul
can know is the love of a purely intellectual principle of beauty and
goodness; and that this love is one in which passion and reason are
wedded into the one supreme desire of the seeker after wisdom and
beauty. Such a conception saved a large body of English poetry from
degenerating into that form of erotic mysticism which Crashaw’s later
poems reveal; and in which there is no elevation of the mind away from
the lower range of sense enjoyment, but only an introversion of the
physical life into the intimacies of spiritual experience.
 II. EARTHLY LOVE
The influence of Platonism upon the love poetry of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries in England is felt in two distinct forms. In the
first place, the teachings of that philosophy were used to explain and
dignify the conception of love as a passion having its source in a desire
for the enjoyment of beauty; and in the second place, the emphasis laid
by Platonism upon the function of the soul as opposed to the senses
resulted in a tendency to treat love as a purely spiritual passion devoid
of all sensuous pleasure. In the first phase the teachings of Platonic
theory were made to render service according to the conventional love
theory known as Petrarchism; and in its second phase Platonism
contributed its share in keeping alive the so-called metaphysical mood
of the seventeenth-century lyric.
According to the conventional method of Petrarchism, the object of
the poet’s love was always a lady of great beauty and spotless virtue, and
of a correspondingly great cruelty. Hence the subjects of the Petrarchian
love poem were either the praise of the mistress’s beauty or an account
of the torment of soul caused by her heartless indifference. By applying
the doctrines of Platonism to this conventional manner, a way was
found to explain upon a seemingly philosophic basis the power of the
lover’s passion and of beauty as its exciting cause. The best example in
English of this application of Platonic theory is Spenser’s two hymns,
—“An Hymne in Honour of Love” and “An Hymne in Honour of
Beautie.”
The professed aim of Spenser in these hymns differs in no wise from
the purpose of the Petrarchian lover. Both are written to ease the
torments of an unrequited passion. In the “Hymne in Honour of Love”
he addresses love in his invocation:
“Love, that long since hast to thy mighty powre,
Perforce subdude my poore captived hart,
And raging now therein with restlesse stowre,
Doest tyrannize in everie weaker part;
Faine would I seeke to ease my bitter smart,
By any service I might do to thee,
Or ought that else might to thee pleasing bee.”
(ll. 4–1
In his closing stanzas he expresses the wish of coming at last to the
object of his desire. (ll. 298–300.) In the “Hymne in Honour of
Beautie,” he openly confesses a desire that through his hymn
“It may so please that she at length will streame
Some deaw of grace, into my withered hart,
After long sorrow and consuming smart.”
(ll. 29–
The only respect in which these hymns differ from the mass of love
poetry of their time is in the method by which Spenser treated the
common subject of the poetical amorists of the Renaissance. In singing
the praises of love and beauty he drew upon the doctrines of Italian
Platonism, and by the power of his own genius blended the purely
expository and lyrical strains so that at times it is difficult to separate
them. The presence of Platonic doctrine, however, is felt in the dignified
treatment of the passion of love and of beauty.
In the “Hymne in Honour of Love” love is described as no merely
cruel passion inflicted by the tyrannical Cupid of the amorist, but as the
manifestation in man of the great informing power which brought the
universe out of chaos and which now maintains it in order and concord.
According to Ficino, the greatest representative of Italian Platonism
during the Renaissance, one truth established by the speech of
Eryximachus in the “Symposium” is that love is the creator and
preserver of all things. “Through this,” Ficino says in his
“Commentarium in Convivium,” “fire moves air by sharing its heat; the
air moves the water, the water moves the earth; and vice versa the earth
draws the water to itself; water, the air; and the air, the fire. Plants and
trees also beget their like because of a desire of propagating their seed.
Animals, brutes, and men are allured by the same desire to beget
offspring.” (III. 2.) And in summing up his discussion he says,
“Therefore all parts of the universe, since they are the work of one
artificer and are members of the same mechanism like to one another
both in being and in life, are linked together by a certain mutual love, so
that love may be rightly declared the perpetual bond of the universe and
the unmoving support of its parts and the firm basis of the whole
mechanism.” (III. 3.) Holding to this conception of love Spenser comes
to a praise of the
“Great god of might, that reignest in the mynd,
And all the bodie to thy hest doest frame,”
(ll. 46–4
with an explanation of His power as the creating and sustaining spirit of
the universe. Before the world was created love moved over the warring
elements of chaos and arranged them in the order they now obey.
“Then through the world his way he gan to take,
The world that was not till he did it make;
Whose sundrie parts he from them selves did sever,
The which before had lyen confused ever,

“The earth, the ayre, the water, and the fyre,

Then gan to raunge them selves in huge array,
And with contrary forces to conspyre
Each against other, by all meanes they may,
Threatning their owne confusion and decay:
Ayre hated earth, and water hated fyre,
Till Love relented their rebellious yre.

“He then them tooke, and tempering goodly well

Their contrary dislikes with loved meanes,
Did place them all in order, and compell
To keepe them selves within their sundrie raines,
Together linkt with Adamantine chaines.”
(ll. 77–9
The second subject which was treated in the light of Platonism was
that of beauty. In the “Hymne in Honour of Beautie” the topic is treated
from three points of view. First, the “Hymne” outlines a general theory
of æsthetics to account for the presence of beauty in the universe lying
without us (ll. 32–87); second, it explains the ground of reason for the
beauty to be found in the human body (ll. 88–164); and third, it
accounts for the exaggerated notion which the lover has of his beloved’s
physical perfections. (ll. 214–270.)
Spenser’s general theory of æsthetics is a blending of two suggestions
he found in his study of Platonism. According to Ficino, beauty is a
spiritual thing, the splendor of God’s light shining in all things. (II. 5; V.
4.) This conception is based upon the idea that the universe is an
emanation of God’s spirit, and that beauty is the lively grace of the
divine light of God shining in matter. (V. 6.) But according to another
view, the universe is conceived as the objective work of an artificer,
working according to a pattern. “The work of the creator,” says Plato in
the “Timæus” (28, 29), “whenever he looks to the unchangeable and
fashions the form and the nature of his work after an unchangeable
pattern, must necessarily be made fair and perfect.... If the world be
indeed fair and the artificer good, it is manifest that he must have
looked to that which is eternal ... for the world is the fairest of creations
and he is the best of causes.” By blending these ideas Spenser was able
to conceive of God as creating the world after a pattern of ideal beauty,
which, by virtue of its infusion into matter, is the source of that lively
grace which the objects called beautiful possess. At first he presents the
view of creation which is more in accordance with the Mosaic account,
“What time this worlds great workmaister did cast
To make al things, such as we now behold:
It seemes that he before his eyes had plast
A goodly Paterne to whose perfect mould,
He fashioned them as comely as he could,
That now so faire and seemely they appeare,
As nought may be amended any wheare.

“That wondrous Paterne

· · · · ·

Is perfect Beautie, which all men adore,

Whose face and feature doth so much excell
All mortall sence, that none the same may tell.”
(ll. 32–4
Spenser now passes on to the theory of the infusion of beauty in matter,
by which its grossness is refined and quickened, as it were, into life.
“Thereof as every earthly thing partakes,
Or more or lesse by influence divine,
So it more faire accordingly it makes,
And the grosse matter of this earthly myne,
Which clotheth it, thereafter doth refyne,
Doing away the drosse which dims the light
Of that faire beame, which therein is empight.

“For through infusion of celestiall powre,

The duller earth it quickneth with delight
And life-full spirits privily doth powre
Through all the parts, that to the looker’s sight
They seeme to please. That is thy soveraine might,
O Cyprian Queene, which flowing from the beame
Of thy bright starre, then into them doest streame.”
(ll. 46–5
At this point of his “Hymne” Spenser pauses to refute the idea that
beauty is
“An outward shew of things, that onely seeme”
(l. 9
His pausing to overthrow such an idea of beauty is quite in the manner
of the scientific expositor in the Italian treatises and dialogues written
throughout the Renaissance. Ficino, for instance, combats the idea,
which he says some hold, that beauty is nothing but the proportion of
the various parts of an object with a certain sweetness of color. (V. 3.) In
like manner Spenser says it is the idle wit that identifies beauty with
proportion and color, both of which pass away.
“How vainely then doe ydle wits invent,
That beautie is nought else, but mixture made
Of colours faire, and goodly temp’rament,
Of pure complexions, that shall quickly fade
And passe away, like to a sommers shade,
Or that it is but comely composition
Of parts well measurd, with meet disposition.”
(ll. 67–7
Spenser overthrows this contention by doubting the power of mere color
and superficial proportion to stir the soul of man. (ll. 74–87.) He has
proved the power of beauty only too well to maintain such a theory. He
thus seeks for the source of its power in the soul.
The Platonic theory of beauty teaches that the beauty of the body is a
result of the formative energy of the soul. According to Ficino, the soul
has descended from heaven and has framed a body in which to dwell.
Before its descent it conceives a certain plan for the forming of a body;
and if on earth it finds material favorable for its work and sufficiently
plastic, its earthly body is very similar to its celestial one, hence it is
beautiful. (VI. 6.) In Spenser this conception underlies his account of
the descent of the soul from God to earth.
“For when the soule, the which derived was
At first, out of that great immortall Spright,
By whom all live to love, whilome did pas
Downe from the top of purest heavens hight,
To be embodied here, it then tooke light
And lively spirits from that fayrest starre,
Which lights the world forth from his firie carre.

“Which powre retayning still or more or lesse,

When she in fleshly seede is eft enraced,
Through every part she doth the same impresse,
According as the heavens have her graced,
And frames her house, in which she will be placed,
Fit for her selfe, adorning it with spoyle
Of th’ heavenly riches, which she robd erewhyle.

· · · · ·

“So every spirit, as it is most pure,

And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer bodie doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairely dight
With chearefull grace and amiable sight.
For of the soule the bodie forme doth take:
For soul is forme, and doth the bodie make.”
(ll. 109–13
The obvious objection which one might make to this theory, that it does
not cover the whole ground inasmuch as it could never account for the
fact of the existence of a good soul in any but a beautiful form, was
answered by the further explanation that when the matter of which the
soul makes its body is unyielding, the soul must content itself with a less
beautiful form. (Ficino, VI. 6.) Thus Spenser adds:
“Yet oft it falles, that many a gentle mynd
Dwels in deformed tabernacle drownd,
Either by chaunce, against the course of kynd,
Or through unaptnesse in the substance sownd,
Which it assumed of some stubborne grownd,
That will not yield unto her formes direction,
But is perform’d with some foule imperfection.”
(ll. 144–15
After an exhortation to the “faire Dames” to keep their souls
unspotted (ll. 165–200), Spenser outlines the true manner of love and
in the course of his poem he accounts for that manifestation of power
which the beloved’s beauty has over the mind of the lover. According to
Ficino, true lovers are those whose souls have departed from heaven
under the same astral influences and who, accordingly, are informed
with the same idea in imitation of which they frame their earthly bodies.
(VI. 6.) Thus Spenser writes that love is not a matter of chance, but a
union of souls ordained by heaven.
“For Love is a celestiall harmonie,
Of likely harts composd of starres concent,
Which joyne together in sweet sympathie,
To work ech others joy and true content,
Which they have harbourd since their first descent
Out of their heavenly bowres, where they did see
And know ech other here belov’d to bee.

“Then wrong it were that any other twaine

Should in loves gentle band combyned bee,
But those whom heaven did at first ordaine,
And made out of one mould the more t’ agree:
For all that like the beautie which they see,
Streight do not love: for love is not so light,
As straight to burne at first beholders sight.”
(ll. 200–2
He then explains the Platonist’s views of love as a passion. Ficino had
stated that the lover is not satisfied with the mere visual image of the
beloved, but refashions it in accordance with the idea of the beloved
which he has; for the two souls departing from heaven at the same time
were informed with the same idea. The lover, then, when he beholds the
person of the beloved, sees a form which has been made more in
conformity with the idea than his own body has; consequently he loves
it, and by refining the visual image of the beloved from all the grossness
of sense, he beholds in it the idea of his own soul and that of the
beloved; and in the light of this idea he praises the beloved’s beauty. (VI.
6.) So Spenser:
“But they which love indeede, looke otherwise,
With pure regard and spotlesse true intent,
Drawing out of the object of their eyes,
A more refyned forme, which they present
Unto their mind, voide of all blemishment;
Which it reducing to her first perfection,
Beholdeth free from fleshes frayle infection.”
(ll. 214–22
Here there is no distinction of lover and beloved; but soon Spenser
passes on to consider the subject from the lover’s standpoint:
“And then conforming it unto the light,
Which in it selfe it hath remaining still
Of that first Sunne, yet sparckling in his sight,
Thereof he fashions in his higher skill,
An heavenly beautie to his fancies will,
And it embracing in his mind entyre,
The mirrour of his owne thought doth admyre.

“Which seeing now so inly faire to be,

As outward it appeareth to the eye,