MORE, Henry.

????????Platonica: or a Platonicall Song of the Soul, consisting of foure severall Poems; viz. ????????? ???????????? ????????????????? ?????????????. Hereto is added a paraphrasticall Interpretation of the answer of Apollo consulted by Amelius, about Plotinus soul departed this life ...

      Cambridge, Printed by Roger Daniel ... 1642. 1642 Small 8vo., pp. [12], 54, [8], 109, [9], 45, [17]; some headlines and page numbers shaved, otherwise a fine, crisp copy in contemporary mottled calf, joints and ends of spine very slightly worn, later gilding (rubbed), old but not contemporary label; the Bradley Martin copy. First edition of an attractive volume of poetry by ‘one of the leading philosophers of his time’ and ‘the most prolific of the group of philosophical divines known now as the Cambridge Platonists’ (Oxford DNB). The four poems are about the life of the soul, the immortality of the soul, the wakefulness of the soul after death, and the plurality of souls. ‘Psychozoia’ in particular ‘has the first spontaneous glow of the satisfying revelation the author’s passionately hungry soul had sought and found’ (OHEL). The Spenserian stanza, long out of fashion by this date, while not perfectly handled throughout is peculiarly suited to the persistent trajectory of More’s thought from lucidity towards mysticism.Mindful of the obscurity of neo-Platonic vocabulary, More has seen fit to append an ‘interpretation of the more unusuall names or words that occurre in the foregoing Poems’, a glossary, in effect, of neo-Platonism. The expanded and revised text of 1647 brings with it an even greater supply of explanatory material, and the verses are smoother, but this first edition communicates an appealing freshness, and is much less common. Wing M 2674.