Through the walls of our prison; And Greece, which was dead, is arisen! 1821. 1822. THE WORLD'S GREAT AGE BEGINS ANEW THE world's great age begins anew, The earth doth like a snake renew Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. A brighter Hellas rears its mountains A new Peneus rolls his fountains Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep A loftier Argo cleaves the main, Fraught with a later prize; Another Orpheus sings again, And loves, and weeps, and dies. A new Ulysses leaves once more Calypso for his native shore. Oh, write no more the tale of Troy, If earth Death's scroll must be! Nor mix with Laian rage the joy Which dawns upon the free: Although a subtler Sphinx renew Riddles of death Thebes never knew. Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, And leave, if nought so bright may live, Saturn and Love their long repose Shall burst, more bright and good Than all who fell, than One who rose, Than many unsubdued: 1 1 Saturn and Love were among the deities of a real or imaginary state of innocence and happiness. All those who fell, or the Gods of Greece, Asia, and Egypt; the One who rose, or Jesus Christ, at whose appearance the idols of the Pagan World were amerced of their worship; and the many unsubdued, or the monstrous ob jects of the idolatry of China, India, the Antarctic islands, and the native tribes of America. certainly have reigned over the understandings of men in conjunction or in succession, during periods in which all we know of evil has been in a state of portentous, and, until the revival of learning and the arts, perpetually increasing activity. (From Shelley's Note.) |
