And yet a chyld, renewing still thy yeares;
And yet the eldest of the heavenly Peares.”
(ll. 46–59.)
Spenser’s “Hymnes” are the most comprehensive exposition of love in the light of Platonic theory in English. The attempt, however, which he made to place love upon a basis of philosophic fact is imitated in a much less prominent way in other poets. Spenser himself refers to the subject in “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe.” In that poem Colin unfolds to Cuddy the high nature of love’s perfection. At the court, he says, love is the all-engrossing topic (ll. 778–786); but it is love so shamefully licentious that its “mightie mysteries” are profaned. (l. 790.) Love, however, is a religious thing and should be so conceived. To support this statement Colin explains the creative power of love manifest throughout the wide range of nature (ll. 843–868) and points out that in man it is a love of beauty. (ll. 869–880).
In a few of Jonson’s masques there are slight attempts to dignify the subject of love in the manner of Spenser’s “Hymnes.” In “The Masque of Beauty” love is described as the creator of the universe, and beauty is mentioned as that for which the world was created. In one of the hymns occurs this stanza:
“When Love at first, did move
From out of Chaos, brightned
So was the world, and lightned
As now.
1. Echo. As now!