It is significant, however, that this verse is in
the nature of a farewell to verse writing. In _The Symbol Seduces,_
"A. E." exclaims,
I leave
For Beauty, Beauty's rarest flower,
For Truth, the lips that ne'er deceive;
For Love, I leave Love's haunted bower.
But this is exactly what the poet, as poet, cannot do. It may be, as
Plato declared, that he is missing the supreme value of life by clinging
to the "many beautiful," instead of the "one beautiful," but if he does
not do so, all the colour of his poetical garment falls away from him,
and he becomes pure philosopher. There is an infinite promise in the
imperfection of the physical world that fascinates the poet. Life is to
him "a dome of many colored glass" that reveals, yet stains, "the white
radiance of eternity." If it were possible for him to gaze upon beauty
apart from her sensuous embodiment, it is doubtful if he would find her
ravishing.
This is only to say that there is no escaping the fundamental aesthetic
problem.
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