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I was glad to see Ralegh on your list. His Twenty-first Book of the Ocean to Cynthia is a magnificent and prescient piece of erotic verse which, I think. elevates him to a unique height in the Temple of Love. Raleigh's lines are at once passionate, courtly, metaphysical and baroque. His love is apotheosized to the light of Cynthia, the virgin moon, in the night sky. For Sir Walter His Cynthia was the guardian of birth and death, the patroness of the no-man's land between love's rejection and its ecstasy. It is a tribute to his greatness that Chapman, that great poet of neoplastic control of passion and sense, did not hesitate to be charmed and perhaps spiritually seduced by the power and passion of Sir Walter's celebration of love's power. While there is much speculation on Ralegh's role in a so-called School of Night, I think his Cynthia is his beacon, his guiding light through that dark night.

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