And the ocean rose, And on the cities and the villages The terror fell apace. There was a strife Of suppliants at the altars; blasphemy Launched at the impotent idols and the kings; There were embraces desperate and dear, And news of suddenest forgivenesses, And a relinquishment of all sweet things; And, guided onward by the pallid prophets, The people climbed, with lamentable cries, In pilgrimage up the mountains. But in vain; For swifter than they climbed the ocean rose, And hid the palms, and buried the sepulchers Far underneath the buried pyramids; And the victorious billow swelled and beat At eagles' Alpine nests, extinguishing All lingering breath of life; and dreadfuller Than the yell rising from the battle-field Seemed the hush of every human sound. On the high solitude of the waters naught Was seen but here and there unfrequently A frail raft, heaped with languid men that fought Weakly with one another for the grass Hanging about a cliff not yet submerged, And here and there a drowned man's head, and here And there a file of birds, that beat the air With weary wings. After the deluge, the race of Noah repeoples the empty world, and the history of mankind begins anew in the Orient. Rome is built, and the Christian era dawns, and Rome falls under the feet of the barbarians. Then the enthusiasm of Christendom sweeps toward the East, in the repeated Crusades; and then, “after long years of twilight”, Dante, the sun of Italian civilization, rises; and at last comes the dream of another world, unknown to the eyes of elder times. But between that and our shore roared diffuse Abysmal seas and fabulous hurricanes Which, thought on, blanched the faces of the bold; For the dread secret of the heavens was then The Western world. Yet on the Italian coasts A boy grew into manhood, in whose soul The instinct of the unknown continent burned. He saw in his prophetic mind depicted The opposite visage of the earth, and, turning With joyful defiance to the ocean, sailed Forth with two secret pilots, God and Genius. Last of the prophets, he returned in chains And glory. In the New World are the traces, as in the Old, of a restless humanity, wandering from coast to coast, growing, building cities, and utterly vanishing. There are graves and ruins everywhere; and the poet's thought returns from these scenes of unstoried desolation, to follow again the course of man in the Old World annals. But here, also, he is lost in the confusion of man's advance and retirement, and he muses: