But to his creature doth his good impart,
This infinite Good through all the world doth wend
To fill with heavenly blisse each willing heart.
So the free Sunne doth ’light and ’liven every part.”
(III. iv. 16.)
So closely allied in the English poets are the teachings of Platonism with the devotional spirit of Christian love that in the same man and even in the same experience the thought can pass most naturally from a conception of Christ’s love for God, as absolute beauty, to a subjective treatment of it as a personal experience. Thus in George Herbert’s lyric, “Love,” the invocation is to the love of Christ for God springing from His imperishable beauty; but in the second division of the poem this love has become a refining fire that can burn all lusts within the soul and enable it to see Him.
“Immortall Love, author of this great frame,
Sprung from that beauty which can never fade,
How hath man parcel’d out Thy glorious name,
And thrown it in that dust which Thou hast made.