 | Three Hundred Sonnets |  |
62
SOCRATES.
Self-knowing, therefore humbled to the dust,Self-curbing, therefore in a sensual age
Pure, patriotic, mild, religious, just,
Self-taught, yet moderate,—Athenian sage,
Albeit but faintly the recording page
Samples the precious harvest of thy brain,
Where Plato's self, thine intellectual son,
And the scarr'd hand of gallant Xenophon,
Have gathered up the fragments that remain
Of thy large speech, with wondrous wisdom fraught,
From those rich morsels we may guess the feast,
And note the Pisgah-summit of thy thought
Bright with true trust, that God hath never ceas'd
To care for all creative love hath wrought.
| Three Hundred Sonnets | |