nspiring another. A characteristic autobiographical love
poem of this type, is that of Francis Thompson, who asserts the ideality
of the poet's affection in his reference to

This soul which on thy soul is laid,
As maid's breast upon breast of maid.
[Footnote: See also _Ad Amicam_, _Her Portrait_, _Manus Animon Pinxit_.]

There is no other barrier that so elevates love as does death.
Translation of love into Platonic idealism is then almost inevitable.
Alexander Smith describes the change accomplished by the death of the
poet's sweetheart:

Two passions dwelt at once within his soul,
Like eve and sunset dwelling in one sky.
And as the sunset dies along the west,
Eve higher lifts her front of trembling stars
Till she is seated in the middle sky,
So gradual one passion slowly died
And from its death the other drew fresh life,
Until 'twas seated in the soul alone,
The dead was love, the living, poetry.

The mystic merging of Beatrice into ideal beauty is, of course,
mentioned often in nineteenth century poetry, most sympathetically,
perhaps, by Rossetti. [Footnote: See _On the Vita Nuova of Dante_;
also _Dante at Verona_.] Much the same kind of translation is
described in _Vane's Story_, by James Thomson, B.V., which appears
to be a sort of mystic autobiography.

The ascent in love for beauty, as Plato describes it, [Footnote:
_Symposium._] might be expected to mark at every step an increase
of poetic power, as it leads one from the individual beauties of sense
to absolute, supersensual beauty. But it is extremely doubtful if this
increase in poetic power is achieved when our poets try to take the last
step, and rely for their inspiration upon a lover's passion for
disembodied, purely ideal beauty. The lyric power of such love has,
indeed, been celebrated by a recent poet. George Edward Woodberry, in
his sonnet sequence, _Ideal Passion_, thus exalts his mistress, the
abstract idea of beauty, above the loves of other poets:

Dante and Petrarch all unenvied go
From star to star, upward, all heavens above,
The grave forgot, forgot the human woe.
Though glorified, their love was human love,
One unto one; a greater love I know.

But very few of our poets have felt their genius burning at its
brightest when they have eschewed the sensuous embodiment of their love.

Plato might point out that he intended his theory of progression in love
as a description of the development of the phil