course, The ever-varying plan of fate, Duty and instinct's twofold force, With proving mind and guidance straight Ye then conducted to their ends. What Nature, as she moves along, Far from each other ever rends, Become upon the stage, in song, Members of order, firmly bound. Awed by the Furies' chorus dread, Murder draws down upon its head The doom of death from their wild sound. Long e'er the wise to give a verdict dared, An Iliad had fate's mysteries declared To early ages from afar; While Providence in silence fared Into the world from Thespis' car. Yet into that world's current so sublime Your symmetry was borne before its time, When the dark hand of destiny Failed in your sight to part by force. What it had fashioned 'neath your eye, In darkness life made haste to die, Ere it fulfilled its beauteous course. Then ye with bold and self-sufficient might Led the arch further through the future's night:    Then, too, ye plunged, without a fear, Into Avernus' ocean black, And found the vanished life so dear Beyond the urn, and brought it back. A blooming Pollux-form appeared now soon, On Castor leaning, and enshrined in light—    The shadow that is seen upon the moon, Ere she has filled her silvery circle bright! Yet higher,—higher still above the earth Inventive genius never ceased to rise:    Creations from creations had their birth, And harmonies from harmonies. What here alone enchants the ravished sight, A nobler beauty yonder must obey; The graceful charms that in the nymph unite, In the divine Athene melt away; The strength with which the wrestler is endowed, In the god's beauty we no longer find:    The wonder of his time—Jove's image proud—     In the Olympian temple is enshrined. The world, transformed by industry's bold hand, The human heart, by new-born instincts moved, That have in burning fights been fully proved, Your circle of creation now expand. Advancing man bears on his soaring pinions,     In gratitude, art with him in his flight, And out of Nature's now-enriched dominions New worlds of beauty issue forth to light. The barriers upon knowledge are o'erthrown; The spirit that, with pleasure soon matured, Has in your easy triumphs been inured To hasten through an artist-whole of graces, Nature's more distant columns duly places. And overtakes her on her pathway lone. He weighs her now with weights that human are, Metes her with measures that she lent of old; While in her beauty's rites more practised far, She now must let his eye her form behold. With youthful and self-pleasing bliss, He lends the spheres his harmony, And, if 

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