University of Virginia Library

Thou beautiful great Greece!
What is our debt to thee!
Upon thy sowing followed such increase
That still to-day, and in all time to be,
Where'er new men aspire,
And have the spring to rise
On thought's unflinching flight, the higher, higher
They mount, the more the lightnings from thine eyes
Shoot life into their souls,
Luring them toward their goals,
Aye beckoning to wider day,
To freer, stronger sight and sway.
This gorgeous western land—
Save in broad Plato's dreams
Unknown to thy bright band—
Basks in the kindling beams
Of thy illumination's might,
As surely as the streets
Of Athens in the fresh transcendent light
Of Socrates, when greets
His talk wise Jove, as he discoursed of duty,
Jove listening from the Acropolis, aglow with beauty.

Moments make histories.
What a midnight was that
When true Aristides,
Close to where Xerxes sat,
Met bold Themistocles,
And, rivalry subdued,
One policy pursued!
To Asia back were hurled barbaric hosts,
With one swift blow freed all the Grecian coasts
From the dire darkness that there threatened them,
And us, far offshoots of that thoughtful stem.
Dear Salamis, thou art
A beacon to the earth:
Thy light thou didst create, and still dost dart
Its rays where minds are polished to reflect mind's worth.

Greece! all thy sunny face
Glistens with beacons high,
Tomb, trophy, or renowned birth-place
Of those that signals are to watchful eye;
Some by creative pen
Snatched from the cloudy brink
Of legend, visionary men,
Whom Homer's vast projecting power
Launched on the ages. Link
'Twixt Gods and men, they cower
Scarce to their clay compeers,
But help us feel, act, think,
As do thy statesmen, artists, soldiers, seers:
Pindar and Phidias, Pericles,
Solon, Leonidas, Timoleon,
And the great kin of these;
Epaminondas, like to Washington
In fortitude and calm far-seeing,
In truthfulness and forceful being;
Miltiades, Phocion, Demosthenes,
And loose colossal Alcibiades;
Sophocles, Æschylus, Euripides,
With brave, derisive Aristophanes,
First forgers of unrusting scenic keys,
And by their side faithful Thucydides;
Nor should be honored any one by us
More than Tyrannicide Thrasybulus;
And still fame scores her wide decrees:
Lesbian Sappho, Simonides,
World-grasping Aristoteles,
And many-minded Empedocles;
Th' heroic Theban, stout Pelopidas,
Thinker and liver pure, Pythagoras,
And Plato the divine, and still diviner
Deep Socrates, in ripened reach of mind
Unparagoned, subtlest refiner
Of the most free and choice and good of human kind.

But him th' Athenians slew:
In cruel blindness bleak
They slew their best, nor knew
In that gross deed how weak
Their will; and how their self-accomplished doom
Was deeply graven on the mighty martyr's tomb.