h
Of the eternal mind;...
... Hence the poet's eye
That mortal sees, creates immortally
The hero more than men, not more than man,
The type prophetic.

Agathon, in an ecstasy of comprehension, chants the praises of love
which Plato puts into his mouth in the _Symposium_. In conclusion,
Urania sums up the mystery of love and genius:

For truth divine is life, not love,
Creative truth, and evermore
Fashions the object of desire
Through love that breathes the spirit's fire.

We may fittingly conclude a discussion of the poet as lover with
the _Epipsychidion_, not merely because it is the most idealistic of
the interpretations of Platonic love given by nineteenth century poets,
but because by virtue of the fact that it describes Shelley's personal
experience, it should be most valuable in revealing the attitude toward
love of one possessing the purest of poetic gifts. [Footnote: Treatment
of this theme is foreshadowed in _Alastor_.]

The prominence given to Shelley's earthly loves in this poem has led J.
A. Symonds to deny that it is truly Platonic. He remarks,

While Shelley's doctrine in _Epipsychidion_ seems Platonic, it will
not square with the _Symposium_.... When a man has formed a just
conception of universal beauty, he looks back with a smile on those who
find their soul's sphere in the love of some mere mortal object. Tested
by this standard, Shelley's identification of Intellectual Beauty with
so many daughters of earth, and his worshipping love of Emilia, is
spurious Platonism.[Footnote: _Shelley_, p. 142.]

Perhaps this failure to break altogether with the physical is precisely
the distinction between the love of the poet and the love of the
philosopher with whom Plato is concerned. I do not believe that the
Platonism of this poem is intrinsically spurious; the conception of
Emilia seems to be intended simply as a poetic personification of
abstract beauty, but it is undeniable that at times this vision does not
mean abstract beauty to Shelley at all, but the actual Emilia Viviani.
He has protested against this judgment, "The _Epipsychidion_ is a
mystery; as to real flesh and blood, you know that I do not deal with
those articles." The revulsion of feeling that turned him away from
Emilia, however, taught him how much of his feeling for her had entered
into the poem, so that, in June, 1822, Shelley wrote,

The _Epipsychidion_ I cannot bear to look at. I think
one is always in lov