Page:Bohemian poems, ancient and modern (Lyra czecho-slovanska).djvu/35

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INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
xxxi

contact and mingling of the two streams of civilization, which have issued, the one from Rome, the other from Constantinople; that through her and her literature the latter will be affected, modified, strengthened, and improved by the former; that she will be the chief agent in the cultivation and moral elevation of the countless Slavonic multitudes in the east of Europe; and that finally her own glorious history will be merged in the splendours of the grand Slavonic civilization, as the bright morning-star fades away and is lost in the glowing radiance of the risen sun.