The lyric power of such love has,
indeed, been celebrated by a recent poet. George Edward Woodberry, in
his sonnet sequence, _Ideal Passion_, thus exalts his mistress, the
abstract idea of beauty, above the loves of other poets:
Dante and Petrarch all unenvied go
From star to star, upward, all heavens above,
The grave forgot, forgot the human woe.
Though glorified, their love was human love,
One unto one; a greater love I know.
But very few of our poets have felt their genius burning at its
brightest when they have eschewed the sensuous embodiment of their love.
Plato might point out that he intended his theory of progression in love
as a description of the development of the philosopher, not of the poet,
who, as a base imitator of sense, has not a pure enough soul to soar
very high away from it. But our writers have been able partially to
vindicate poets by pointing out that Dante was able to travel the whole
way toward absolute beauty, and to sublimate his perceptions to
supersensual fineness without losing their poetic tone.
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