With daring flight, aloft Thought's pinions sweep;
The horrid thing with beauty's robe men cover:
A gentle youth puts out his torch, to sleep;
Sweet comes the end, like moaning lute of lover.
Cool shadow-floods o'er melting memory creep:
So sang the song, for Misery was the mover.
Still undeciphered lay the endless Night--
The solemn symbol of a far-off Might.
The old world began to decline. The pleasure-garden of the young race
withered away; up into opener regions and desolate, forsaking his
childhood, struggled the growing man. The gods vanished with their
retinue. Nature stood alone and lifeless. Dry Number and rigid Measure
bound her with iron chains. As into dust and air the priceless blossoms of
life fell away in words obscure. Gone was wonder-working Faith, and the
all-transforming, all-uniting angel-comrade, the Imagination. A cold north
wind blew unkindly over the torpid plain, and the wonderland first froze,
then evaporated into aether. The far depths of heaven filled with flashing
worlds. Into the deeper sanctuary, into the more exalted region of the
mind, the soul of the world retired with all her powers, there to rule
until the dawn should break of the glory universal. No longer was the
Light the abode of the gods, and the heavenly token of their presence:
they cast over them the veil of the Night. The Night became the mighty
womb of revelations; into it the gods went back, and fell asleep, to go
abroad in new and more glorious shapes over the transfigured world.
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