Classic Poem

Saint-Gaudens - Part 5

So, on the traveled verge
Of storied Boston's green acropolis
That sculptured music, that immortal dirge
That better than towering shaft
Has fitly epitaphed
The hated ranks men did not dare to hiss!
When Duty makes her clarion call to Ease
Let her repair and point to this:
Why seek another clime?
Why seek another place?
We have no Parthenon, but a nobler frieze,—
Since sacrifice than worship nobler is.
It sings—the anthem of a rescued race;
It moves—the epic of a patriot time,
And each heroic figure makes a martial rhyme.
How like ten thousand treads that little band,
Fit for the van of armies! What command
Sits in that saddle! What renouncing will!
What portent grave of firm-confronted ill!
And as a cloud doth hover over sea,
Born from its waters and returning there,
Fame, sprung from thoughts of mortals, swims the air
And gives them back her memories, deathlessly.English