How grand and how true is his paean!
Out of the night, out of the blinding night
Thy beacon flashes;--hail, beloved light
Of Greece and Grecian; hail, for in the mirk
Thou cost reveal each valley and each height.
Thou art my leader, and the footprints shine,
Wherein I plant my own....
* * * * *
The world was shine to read, and having read,
Before thy children's eyes thou didst outspread
The fruitful page of knowledge, all the wealth
Of wisdom, all her plenty for their bread.
(Bk. III.--Translated by D. A. Slater.)
Let us come out of the murky night of the East, heavy with
phantoms,
into the bright daylight of the West, into the company of men
whose
thoughts made our thoughts, and whose ways made our ways--the men
who first dared to look on nature with the clear eyes of the
mind.
Browning's famous poem, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," is an
allegory of the pilgrimage of man through the dark places of the earth,
on a dismal path beset with demons, and strewn with the wreckage of
generations of failures. In his ear tolled the knell of all the lost
adventurers, his peers, all lost, lost within sight of the dark Tower
itself--
The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart,
Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
In the whole world.
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