Transcending Platonic Platitudes Poem by gershon hepner

Coxcomb, charlatan and bore,
Plato paved immoral ways for Byron. He
transcended platitudes that bore,
transforming them with his immortal irony.

Inspired by Byron’s lines in Don Juan, CXVI, cited by Roger Scruton in Sexual Desire: A Phiosophic Investigation, p.237:

Oh, Plato! Plato! You have paved the way,
With your confounded fantasies, to more
Immoral conduct by the fancied way
Your system feigns o’er the controlless core
Of human hearts, than all the long array
Of poets and romancers: –– You’re a bore,
A charlatan, a coxcomb –– and have been,
At best, no better than a go-between.

8/29/09