XXII.

  Still, Heaven deferred the hour ordained to rend
  From saintly rottenness the sacred stole;
  And cowl and worshipped shrine could still defend
  The wretch with felon stains upon his soul;
  And crimes were set to sale, and hard his dole
  Who could not bribe a passage to the skies;
  And vice, beneath the mitre’s kind control,
  Sinned gaily on, and grew to giant size,
Shielded by priestly power, and watched by priestly eyes.

XXIII.

  At last the earthquake came—­the shock, that hurled
  To dust, in many fragments dashed and strown,
  The throne, whose roots were in another world,
  And whose far-stretching shadow awed our own. 
  From many a proud monastic pile, o’erthrown,
  Fear-struck, the hooded inmates rushed and fled;
  The web, that for a thousand years had grown
  O’er prostrate Europe, in that day of dread
Crumbled and fell, as fire dissolves the flaxen thread.

XXIV.

  The spirit of that day is still awake,
  And spreads himself, and shall not sleep again;
  But through the idle mesh of power shall break
  Like billows o’er the Asian monarch’s chain;
  Till men are filled with him, and feel how vain,
  Instead of the pure heart and innocent hands,
  Are all the proud and pompous modes to gain
  The smile of heaven;—­till a new age expands
Its white and holy wings above the peaceful lands.

XXV.

  For look again on the past years;—­behold,
  How like the nightmare’s dreams have flown away
  Horrible forms of worship, that, of old,
  Held, o’er the shuddering realms, unquestioned sway: 
  See crimes, that feared not once the eye of day,
  Rooted from men, without a name or place: 
  See nations blotted out from earth, to pay
  The forfeit of deep guilt;—­with glad embrace
The fair disburdened lands welcome a nobler race.

XXVI.

  Thus error’s monstrous shapes from earth are driven;
  They fade, they fly—­but truth survives their flight;
  Earth has no shades to quench that beam of heaven;
  Each ray that shone, in early time, to light
  The faltering footsteps in the path of right,
  Each gleam of clearer brightness shed to aid
  In man’s maturer day his bolder sight,
  All blended, like the rainbow’s radiant braid,
Pour yet, and still shall pour, the blaze that cannot fade.

XXVII.