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!

   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!