With the day’s new-born flowers about our feet,

We sought an ancient world grown young our youth to greet.{49}

{49}

And pleasant of that world it was to think,

And all that we had heard in song and lore

Of old grey cities on the ocean’s brink,

Where to their anchorage the great ships bore

Bales from the Orient, and golden store

From the far south, and, dark and grim and tall,

Behind the dreaming masts rose floor on floor,

Warehouse and granary, and over all

Loomed some great tower or dome of Mary or of Paul.

The vanished regions of our old surmise

We mourned not now, for eager we had grown

To read the record of the centuries,

And enter the great kingdoms of the known.

Ay! better than the unexplored and lone{50}

{50}

We deemed that world in which the human heart

Was written, where mankind had built and sown,

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