T. S. Eliot, in his 1929 essay on Dante, wrote that as a philosophical poem, the Gita is second only to the Divine Comedy. In terms of artistry, drama, and sheer poetic power, the Divine Comedy is incomparably great, in a category by itself. But the spiritual consciousness that informs it is crude in comparison with the Gita poet's consciousness, not to speak of Lao-tzu's.