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The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt/Plato's Archetypal Man

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PLATO'S ARCHETYPAL MAN.

ACCORDING TO THE IDEA OF IT ENTERTAINED BY ARISTOTLE.

FROM THE LATIN OF MILTON.

Say, guardian goddesses of woods,Aspects felt in solitudes,And Memory, at whose blessed kneeThe Nine, which thy dear daughters be,Learnt of the majestic past;And thou, that in some antre vastLeaning afar off dost lie,Otiose Eternity,Keeping the tablets and decreesOf Jove, and the ephemeridesOf the gods, and calendarsOf the ever festal stars;Say, who was he, the sunless shade,After whose pattern man was made;He first, the full of ages, bornWith the old pale polar morn,Sole, yet all; first visible thought,After which the Deity wrought?Twin-birth with Pallas, not remainDoth he in Jove's o'ershadow'd brain,But though of wide communion,Dwells apart, like one alone,And fills the wondering embrace(Doubt it not) of size and place.Whether, companion of the stars,With their ten-fold round he errs;Or inhabits with his loneNature in the neighbouring moon; Or sits with body-waiting souls,Dozing by the Lethæan pools:—Or whether, haply, placed afarIn some blank region of our star,He stalks, an unsubstantial heap,Humanity's giant archetype;Where a loftier bulk he rearsThan Atlas, grappler of the stars,And through their shadow-touch'd abodesBrings a terror to the gods.Not the seer of him had sight,Who found in darkness depths of light;[1]His travell'd eyeballs saw him notIn all his mighty gulphs of thought:—Him the farthest-footed god,Pleiad Mercury, never shewedTo any poet's wisest sightIn the silence of the night:—News of him the Assyrian priest[2]Found not in his sacred list,Though he traced back old king Nine,And Belus, elder name divine,And Osiris, endless famed.Not the glory, triple-named,Thrice great Hermes, though his eyesRead the shapes of all the skies,Left him in his sacred verseReveal'd to Nature's worshippers.
O Plato! and was this a dreamOf thine in bowery Academe?Wert thou the golden tongue to tellFirst of this high miracle,And charm him to thy schools below?O call thy poets back, if so:[3] Back to the state thine exiles call,Thou greatest fabler of them all;Or follow through the self-same gate,Thou, the founder of the state.


  1. Tiresias, who was blind.
  2. Sanchoniathon.
  3. Whom Plate banished from his imaginary republic.