Classic Poem

What bids the soul of man to gaze,
Upon a spot of earth,
As a sun of focal rays?
The spell of human worth!

The spot where human virtue stood,
And struck for holy truth,
Still stirs the world's ecstatic blood,
A thing of mighty youth!

When can the name of Marathon,
Fall powerless, on the soul;
Whilst thoughts of right, or injury, done,
Along its fibres, roll?

Can Waterloo grow trite by time,
Or Yorktown fail to fire,
Man's breast, with hatred most sublime,
To wrong, till time expire?

What hallows thus the hills of Greece,
And flings that light o'er Rome,
Which when her very fragments cease,
Still crowns her history's dome?

'Tis truth's great warfare bravely fought,
That hallows in the core,
A mount--a plain--a barren spot--
With fame which dies no more.

And when can earth forget to glow,
Beside each glorious shrine?
Not till yon stars shall dart below,
And sun shall cease to shine.