The careless reaper-bands, and pass'd the heavens' high pale,

And supp'd with God, in vision! Or with him,
Earliest and greatest of his name, who gave
His life to Nature, in her caverns dim
Tracking her soul, through poverty to the grave,
And left his Great Work to the barbarous age
That, in its folly-love,
With wizard-fame defamed his and sweet Vergil's page.

But systems have their day, and die, or change
Transform'd to new: Not now from cloister-cell
And desk-bow'd priest, breathes out that impulse strange
'Neath which the world of feudal Europe fell:--
Throes of new birth, new life; while men despair'd
Or triumph'd in their pride,
As in their eyes the torch of learning fiercely flared.

For now the cry of Homer's clarion first
And Plato's golden tongue on English ears
And souls aflame for that new doctrine burst,
As Grocyn taught, when, after studious years,
He came from Arno to the liberal walls
That welcomed me in youth,
And nursed in Grecian lore, long native to her halls.

O voice that spann'd the gulf of vanish'd years,
Evoking shapes of old from night to light,
Lo at thy spell a long-lost world appears,
Where Rome and Hellas break upon our sight:--