The Visions of England Part 8

As she who in some village-child unknown, With rustic grace and fantasy bedeck'd And in her simple loveliness alone, A sister finds;--and the long years' neglect Effaces with warm love and nursing care, And takes her heart to heart, And in her treasured treasures bids her freely share,

And robes with radiance new, new strength and grace:-- h.e.l.las and England! thus it was with ye!

Though distanced far by centuries and by s.p.a.ce, Sisters in soul by Nature's own decree.

And if on Athens in her glory-day The younger might not look, Her living soul came back, and reinfused our clay.

--It was not wholly lost, that better light, Not in the darkest darkness of our day; From cell to cell, e'en through the Danish night, The torch ran on its firefly fitful way; And blazed anew with him who in the vale Of fair Aosta saw The careless reaper-bands, and pa.s.s'd the heavens' high pale,

And supp'd with G.o.d, 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 h.e.l.las break upon our sight:-- The Gothic gloom divides; a glory burns Behind the clouds of Time, And all that wonder-past in beauty's glow returns.

--For when the Northern floods that lash'd and curl'd Around the granite fragments of great Rome Outspread Colossus-like athwart the world, Foam'd down, and the new nations found their home, That earlier Europe, law and arts and arms, Fell into far-off shade, Or lay like some fair maid sleep-sunk in magic charms.

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 G.o.ds 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, h.e.l.lenic inspiration, pure and deep: Strange treasures of Byzantine h.o.a.rds 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 G.o.d, 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;--

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 pa.s.sed 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!

MARGARET TUDOR

_PROTHALAMION_

1503

Love who art above us all, Guard the treasure on her way, Flower of England, fair and tall, Maiden-wise and maiden-gay, As her northward path she goes; Daughter of the double rose.

Look with twofold grace on her Who from twofold root has grown, Flower of York and Lancaster, Now to grace another throne, Rose in Scotland's garden set,-- Britain's only Margaret.

Exile-child from childhood's bower, Pledge and bond of Henry's faith, James, take home our English flower, Guard from touch of scorn and skaith; Bearing, in her slender hands, Palms of peace to hostile lands.

Safe by southern smiling shires, Many a city, many a shrine; By the newly kindled fires Of the black Northumbrian mine; Border clans in ambush set; Carry thou fair Margaret.

--Land of heath and hill and linn, Land of mountain-freedom wild, She in heart to thee is kin, Tudor's daughter, Gwynedd's child!

In her lively lifeblood share Gwenllian and Angharad fair.

East and West, from Dee to Yare, Now in equal bonds are wed: Peace her new-found flower shall wear, Rose that dapples white with red; North and South, dissever'd yet, Join in this fair Margaret!

Ocean round our Britain roll'd, Sapphire ring without a flaw, When wilt thou one realm enfold, One in freedom, one in law?

Will that ancient feud be sped, Brothers' blood by brothers shed?

--Land with freedom's struggle sore, Land to whom thy children cling With a lover's love and more, Take the gentle gift we bring!

Pearl in thy crown royal set; Scotland's other Margaret.

Margaret Tudor, daughter to Henry VII, married in 1502 to James IV, and afterwards to Lord Angus, was thus great-grandmother on both sides to James I of England.

_Gwynedd's child_; The Tudors intermarried with the old royal family of North Wales, in whose pedigree occur the girl-names Gwenllian and Angharad.