Platonism in English poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

by John Smith Harrison

That never yet was seene of Faeries sonne.”

(I. x. 52.)

While on this Mount he is initiated into a knowledge of the glories of the Heavenly Jerusalem, and through this experience he is made aware of the relative insignificance of that beauty which he had thought the greatest to be known on earth. He thus says to the aged man, Heavenly Contemplation, who has revealed this vision to him:

“Till now, said then the knight, I weened well,

That great Cleopolis, where I have beene,

In which that fairest Faerie Queene doth dwell,

The fairest Citie was, that might be seene;

And that bright towre all built of christall cleene,

Panthea, seemd the brightest thing, that was:

But now by proofe all otherwise I weene;