the first of men may look out to the east. *

--
* Tennyson uses a similar figure in `The Two Voices'. The speaker,
who is meditating whether "to be or not to be", says: --

"Were this not well, to bide mine hour,
Though watching from a ruined tower
How grows the day of human power."

The ruined tower is his own dilapidated selfhood, whence he takes
his outlook upon the world.
--

By the eventual rest atop of the tower, is indicated the aim
of the Greek civilization, to reach a calm within the finite,
while the soul is constituted and destined to gravitate forever
towards the infinite -- to "force our straitened sphere. . .
display completely here the mastery another life should learn."
(`Sordello'.) The eventual rest in this world is not
the Christian ideal. Earth-life, whatever its reach,
and whatever its grasp, is to the Christian a broken arc,
not a perfect round.

Cleon goes on to recount his accomplishments in the arts,
and what he has done in philosophy, in reply to the first requirement
of Protos's letter, Protos, as it appears, having heard of,
and wonderingly enumerated, the great things Cleon has effected;
and he has written to know the truth of the report. Cleon replies,
that the epos on the King's hundred plates of gold is his,