Platonism in English poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

by John Smith Harrison

“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. 5.)

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: