“Be silent then,
All Tongues of Men,
To Celebrate the Sex: for if you fall
To other Faces, you
Wander, and but pursue
Inferior objects, weake and partiall.”
(Ode xxiv.)
A second tenet of Platonism which was reworked into English love poetry was its conception of love. As Spenser had explained in his “Hymne in Honour of Beautie,” true love has its source in the life of two souls in heaven. (ll. 200–213.) Drummond uses the idea to explain the purity of his love.
“That learned Grecian, who did so excel
In knowledge passing sense, that he is nam’d