On The Platonic 'Ideal' As It Was Understood By Aristotle.

Ye sister Pow'rs who o'er the sacred groves     Preside, and, Thou, fair mother of them all     Mnemosyne,[1] and thou, who in thy grot     Immense reclined at leisure, hast in charge     The Archives and the ord'nances of Jove,     And dost record the festivals of heav'n,     Eternity!--Inform us who is He,     That great Original by Nature chos'n     To be the Archetype of Human-kind,     Unchangeable, Immortal, with the poles     Themselves coaeval, One, yet ev'rywhere,     An image of the god, who gave him Being?     Twin-brother of the Goddess born from Jove,[2]     He dwells not in his Father's mind, but, though     Of common nature with ourselves, exists     Apart, and occupies a local home.     Whether, companion of the stars, he spend     Eternal ages, roaming at his will     From sphere to sphere the tenfold heav'ns, or dwell     On the moon's side that nearest neighbours Earth,     Or torpid on the banks of Lethe[3] sit     Among the multitude of souls ordair'd     To flesh and blood, or whether (as may chance)     That vast and giant model of our kind     In some far-distant region of this globe     Sequester'd stalk, with lifted head on high     O'ertow'ring Atlas, on whose shoulders rest     The stars, terrific even to the Gods.     Never the Theban Seer,[4] whose blindness proved     His best illumination, Him beheld     In secret vision; never him the son     Of Pleione,[5] amid the noiseless night     Descending, to the prophet-choir reveal'd;     Him never knew th'Assyrian priest,[6] who yet     The ancestry of Ninus[7] chronicles,     And Belus, and Osiris far-renown'd;     Nor even Thrice-great Hermes,[7] although skill'd     So deep in myst'ry, to the worshippers     Of Isis show'd a prodigy like Him.             And thou,[8] who hast immortalized the shades     Of Academus, if the school received     This monster of the Fancy first from Thee,     Either recall at once the banish'd bards     To thy Republic, or, thyself evinc'd     A wilder Fabulist, go also forth.