“Else, being alike pure, we should neither see;
As, water being into air rarefied,
Neither appear, till in one cloud they be,
So, for our sakes, you do low names abide.”
Beneath this torture of conceits may be seen the idea that woman is that very virtue of which Plato has spoken in his “Phædrus.” Sidney has used the idea to compliment Stella; but Donne’s purpose is to show how woman, as woman, is to be identified with it, and that the differentiation in the concept resulting from the fact that she may be a wife or a mother is due to the necessity that this virtue become visible on earth.
The second Platonic conception through which Donne conveys his idea of woman’s nature is the universal soul. In his lyric, “A Fever,” he says, speaking of the object of his love:
“But yet thou canst not die, I know;
To leave this world behind, is death;
But when thou from this world wilt go,
The whole world vapours with thy breath.