Ah! since your gray Pierian ilex-groves Felt the despoiling tread of barbarous feet, This land, o'er all, the Delian leader loves; Here is your favourite home, your genuine seat:-- In these green western isles renew the throne Where Grace by Wisdom shines; --We welcome with full hearts, and claim you for our own! If, looking at England, one point may be singled out in that long movement, generalized under the name of the Renaissance, as critical, it is the introduction of the Greek and Latin literature:--which has remained ever since conspicuously the most powerful and enlarging element, the most effectively educational, among all blanches of human study. _In the vale Of fair Aosta_; See Anselm's youthful vision of the gleaners and the palace of heaven (Green: _History_, B. II: ch. ii). _His Great Work_; Roger Bacon's so-named _Opus Majus_: 'At once,' says Whewell, 'the Encyclopaedia and the Novum Organum of the thirteenth century.' Like Vergil, Bacon passed at one time for a magician. _That new doctrine_; Grocyn was perhaps the first Englishman who studied Greek under Chalcondylas the Byzantine at Florence; certainly the first who lectured on Greek in England. This was in the Hall of Exeter College, Oxford, in 1491. To him Erasmus (1499) came to study the language.--See the brilliant account of the revival of learning in Green, _Hist_. B. V: ch. ii. _Master, who alone_; See _The Poet's Euthanasia_. _Sebastian_; Cabot, who, in 1497, sailed from Bristol, and reached Florida. _The golden sun_; Refers to Copernicus; whose solar system was, however, not published till 1543. _The little-ones_; Colet, Dean of S. Paul's, founded the school in 1510. 'The bent of its founder's mind was shown by the image of the Child Jesus over the master's chair, with the words _Hear ye Him_ graven beneath it' (Green: B. V: ch. iv). _Fifty years_; Between 1570 and 1620 lies almost all the glorious production of our so-called Elizabethan period. _From Libethrion_;--_Nymphae, noster amor, Libethrides_! . . . What a music is there in the least little fragment of Vergil's exquisite art! MARGARET TUDOR _PROTHALAMION_ 1503 Love who art above us all, Guard the treasure on her way, Flower of England, fair and tall, Maiden-wise and maiden-gay, As her northward path she goes; Daughter of the double rose. Look with twofold grace on her Who from twofold root has grown, Flower of York and Lancaster, Now to grace another throne, Rose in Scotland's garden set,-- Britain's only Margaret. Exile-child from childhood's bower, Pledge and bond of Henry's faith, James, take home our English flower, Guard from touch of scorn and skaith; Bearing, in her slender hands, Palms of peace to hostile lands. Safe by southern smiling shires, Many a city, many a shrine; By the newly kindled fires Of the black Northumbrian mine; Border clans in ambush set; Carry thou fair Margaret.