Ye spirits, whose soaring vivified your plumes;
Whose godlike names swell man’s adoring breath;
Whose glory, time, nor space, nor hate consumes;
Ministers of love, whose virtue conquers death;
Such love of Beauty for its own dear sake,
Resident in the soul, the mind, the form,
Only could inspire what ye dared undertake,
And bear ye, conquerors, through the mist and storm:
Great humanisers of the world, fusing your merit
Through the inattentive cycles of the years;
Most know not the profusion they inherit,
So hath your spirit impregnated men’s tears:
Severing what Gordian knots of mysteries,
Love echoes Christ, Spinoza, Socrates!