With daring mind, as heavenly fancy glows, Man masks the fearful shape with fair resembling: His torch put out, a mild youth doth repose; Soft is the end as the lyre’s mournful trembling. Remembrance fades i’ the gloom a shadow throws: So sang the song, a dreadful doom dissembling. Yet undefined remained eternal Night, The stern reminder of some distant might.” At length the old world bowed its head. The gay gardens of the young race were withered; beyond into the freer, desert space aspired less childish and maturing man. The gods then vanished with their train. Lonely and lifeless, Nature stood. The scanty number and the rigid measure bound her with fetters of iron. As into dust and air melted the inconceivable blossoms of life into mysterious words. Fled was the magic faith, and phantasy the all-changing, all-uniting friend from heaven. Over the rigid earth, unfriendly, blew a cold north wind, and the wonder-home, now without life, was lost in ether; the recesses of the heavens were filled with beaming worlds. Into a holier sphere, into the mind’s far higher space, did the world draw the soul with its powers, there to wander until the break of the world’s dawning glory. No longer was the light the gods’ abode, their token in the heavens: the veil of the night did they cast over them. The night was the mighty bosom of revelations; in it the gods returned, and slumbered there, to go forth in new and in more glorious forms over the altered world. Among the people above all despised, too soon matured, and wilful strangers to the blessed innocence of youth; among them, with features hitherto unseen, the new world came, in the poet’s hut of poverty, a son of the first virgin mother, endless fruit of a mysterious embrace. The boding, budding wisdom of the East first recognised another Time’s beginning; to the humble cradle of the monarch their star declared the way. In the name of the distant future, with splendour and with incense, did they make offering to him, the highest wonder of the world. In solitude did the heavenly heart unfold to a flowery chalice of almighty love, bent towards the holy countenance of the father, and resting on the happily-expectant bosom of the lovely pensive mother. With divine ardour did the prophetic eye of the blooming child look forth into the days of the future, towards his beloved, the offspring of the race of God, careless for his day’s earthly destiny. The most child-like spirits, wondrously seized with a deep, heart-felt love, collected soon around him; as flowers, a new and unknown life budded forth upon his path. Words inexhaustible, the gladdest tidings fell, as sparks from a heavenly spirit, from his friendly lips. From a distant coast, born under Hellas’ cheerful sky, a minstrel came to Palestine, and yielded his whole heart to the wondrous child:—