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 volumes from monastic sleep, Reclad with life by more than magic art: Till that old world renew'd His youth, and in the past the present own'd its part. --O vision that ye saw, and hardly saw, Ye who in Alfred's path at Oxford trod, Or in our London train'd by studious law The little-ones of Christ to Him and God, Colet and Grocyn!--Though the world forget The labours of your love, In loving hearts your names live in their fragrance yet. O vision that our happier eyes have seen! For not till peace came with Elizabeth Did those fair maids of holy Hippocrene Cross the wan waves and draw a northern breath: Though some far-echoed strain on Tuscan lyres Our Chaucer caught, and sang Like her who sings ere dawn has lit his Eastern fires;-- Herald of that first splendour, when the sky Was topaz-clear with hope, and life-blood-red With thoughts of mighty poets, lavishly Round all the fifty years' horizon shed:-- Now in our glades the Aglaian Graces gleam, Around our fountains throng, And change Ilissus' banks for Thames and Avon stream. Daughters of Zeus and bright Eurynome, She whose blue waters pave the Aegaean plain, Children of all surrounding sky and sea, A larger ocean claims you, not in vain! Ye who to Helicon from Thessalia wide Wander'd when earth was young, Come from Libethrion, come; our love, our joy, our pride!