beauty's glow returns.

--For when the Northern floods that lash'd and curl'd
Around the granite fragments of great Rome
Outspread Colossus-like athwart the world,
Foam'd down, and the new nations found their home,
That earlier Europe, law and arts and arms,
Fell into far-off shade,
Or lay like some fair maid sleep-sunk in magic charms.

And as in lands once flourishing, now forlorn,
And desolate capitals, the traveller sees
Wild tribes, in ruins from the ruins torn
Hutted like beasts 'mid marble palaces,
Unknowing what those relics mean, and whose
The goblets gold-enchased
And images of the gods the broken vaults disclose;

So in the Mid-age from the Past of Man
The Present was disparted; and they stood
As on some island, sever'd from the plan
Of the great world, and the sea's twilight flood
Around them, and the monsters of the unknown;
Blind fancy mix'd with fact;
Faith in the things unseen sustaining them alone.

Age of extremes and contrasts!--where the good
Was more than human in its tenderness
Of chivalry;--Beauty's self the prize of blood,
And evil raging round with wild excess
Of more than brutal:--A disjointed time!
Doubt with Hypocrisy pair'd,
And purest Faith by folly, childlike, led to crime.

O Florentine, O Master, who alone
From thy loved Vergil till our Shakespeare came
Didst climb the long steps to the imperial throne,
With what immortal dyes of angry flame
Hast blazon'd out the vileness of the day!
What tints of perfect love
Rosier than summer rose, etherealize thy lay!

--Now, as in some new land when night is deep
The pilgrim halts, nor knows what round him lies
And wakes with dawn, and finds him on the steep,
While plains beneath and unguess'd summits rise,
And stately rivers widening to the sea,
Cities of men and towers,
Abash'd for very joy, and gazing fearfully;--

New worlds, new wisdom, a new birth of things
On Europe shine, and men know where they stand:
The sea his western portal open flings,
And bold Sebastian strikes the flowery land:
Soon, heaven its secret yields; the golden sun
Enthrones him in the midst,
And round his throne man and the planets humbly run.

New learning all! yet fresh from fountains old,
Hellenic inspiration, pure and deep:
Strange treasures of Byzantine hoards unroll'd,
And mouldering vol