On the high solitude of the waters naught
Was seen but here and there unfrequently
A frail raft, heaped with languid men that fought
Weakly with one another for the grass
Hanging about a cliff not yet submerged,
And here and there a drowned man's head, and here
And there a file of birds, that beat the air
With weary wings.
After the deluge, the race of Noah repeoples the empty world, and the
history of mankind begins anew in the Orient. Rome is built, and the
Christian era dawns, and Rome falls under the feet of the barbarians.
Then the enthusiasm of Christendom sweeps toward the East, in the
repeated Crusades; and then, "after long years of twilight", Dante,
the sun of Italian civilization, rises; and at last comes the dream of
another world, unknown to the eyes of elder times.
But between that and our shore roared diffuse
Abysmal seas and fabulous hurricanes
Which, thought on, blanched the faces of the bold;
For the dread secret of the heavens was then
The Western world. Yet on the Italian coasts
A boy grew into manhood, in whose soul
The instinct of the unknown continent burned.
He saw in his prophetic mind depicted
The opposite visage of the earth, and, turning
With joyful defiance to the ocean, sailed
Forth with two secret pilots, God and Genius.
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