Chronicles and Characters :: :: University of Virginia Library

Dandalo
Said then . . . . “The time is come, which long ago
I saw in Zara. Who eschew the good
Must choose the evil. Drunk with brawl and blood,
This Empire reels upon her downward road;
Corrupt at home, contemptible abroad.
Devilish, she would be godlike without God:
Godless, would rule, who needs, herself, the rod:
And deems, not being good, she can be great:
—Great, without one great man, i' the face of Fate!
The singular tyrant breeds the general slave,
And shameless citizens shamed cities have.
The time is now, and ours the hands, O friends,
To sweep this rubbish hence, and make amends
To earth, too long encumber'd with the same.
—To arms, for all men's sake, and in God's name!”

So, down before the iron Occident
The guilty golden-crownèd Orient went.

Because those Powers that make, and break, and keep,
And cast away—Spirits that in the deep

And toilful stithy of that underground
Grey miner, Nature, with unheeded sound
Monotonously hammer, heave, and beat,
And bend with blow on blow, and heat on heat,
The pliant world to every shape it wears,
Upon the stubborn anvils of the years—
—Said to each other “Break we up this Past!”
And suddenly one half a world was cast
Into the furnace, to be forged anew.