And as in lands once flourishing, now forlorn,
   And desolate capitals, the traveller sees
   Wild tribes, in ruins from the ruins torn
   Hutted like beasts ’mid marble palaces,
   Unknowing what those relics mean, and whose
      The goblets gold-enchased
And images of the gods the broken vaults disclose;

   So in the Mid-age from the Past of Man
   The Present was disparted; and they stood
   As on some island, sever’d from the plan
   Of the great world, and the sea’s twilight flood
   Around them, and the monsters of the unknown;
      Blind fancy mix’d with fact;
Faith in the things unseen sustaining them alone.

   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;—­