“ Roman Virgil, thou that singest Ilion’s lofty temples robed in fire, Ilion falling, Rome arising, wars, and filial faith, and Dido’s pyre ; Landscape-lover, lord of language—more than he thatsang the Works and Days, All the chosen coin of fancy flashing out from many a golden phrase ; Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and heard ; All of the charms of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word ; Poet of the happy Tityrus piping underneath his beechen bowers ; Poet of the poet-satyr whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers ; Chanter of the Pollio, glorying in the blissful years again to be, Summers of the snakeless meadow, unlaborious earch and oarless sea ; Thou that seest Universal Nature moved by Universal Mind ; Thou Majestic in thy sadness at the doubtful doom of human kind ; Light among the vanish’d ages ; star that gildest yet this phantom shore ; Golden branch amid the shadows, kings and realms that pass to rise no more ; Now thy Forum roars no longer, fallen every purple Cæsar’s dome— Though thine ocean-roll of rhythm sound for ever of Imperial Rome— Now the Rome of slaves hath perish’d, and the Rome of freemen holds her place : I, from out the Northern Island sunder’d once from all the human race, I salute thee, mighty Mantuan, I that loved thee since my day began, Wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man.”