Classic Poem

THE PALACE OF LEARNING

Once more with Fancy's mystic eyes
We see a palace fair arise.
Its vast cyclopean groundwork tells
Of eons work, not magic spells.
Roll back the curtain and its plan
Is seen to be as old as man.

On Asia's plain it was begun
By Magians, children of the sun,
When o'er the skies serenely arched
The hosts of stars at midnight marched.
They built the towers, they toiled by night,
Men gifted with an inner sight.
They knew the powers of numbers then;
They cast the horoscopes of men.

Beside the flood of turbid Nile
The priests of Isis spread the pile
And in the dusky inner rooms
Worked hieroglyphics for their tombs.
In curious lines, in solemn scrolls,
They traced the mystery of souls.

Their names are lost, but what they wrought
Is kept in treasuries of thought.
In Palestine a thousand years
Saw swift succession of holy seers
From him who, filled with speechless awe,
Wrote down the thunders of the Law
On tables of enduring stone
To him who sat on Salem's throne
And sang the wonders of God's grace
With rapture on his beauteous face;
From those who coming woes foretold
To him who saw the heavens unrolled;
They too helped build the palace vast
Whose every stone was set to last.

And Hellas, as the ages went,
Her long procession proudly sent
To hew the column, carve the frieze,
To stablish new philosophies,
To sing of Ilion's fateful strife,
To write high tragedies of life.
What list of grander names is found
With Time's eternal triumph crowned,
Each art her representative
To hold as long as nations live?
Here Sappho showed that woman's power
Might add to Poesy's shining dower;
Here Plato with his master mind
Gave new ideals to mankind;
Here Aristotle touched the keys
Of all the human sciences.
A hundred names illume the walls
Of those undying classic halls,
Each giving to the mighty whole
The value of a human soul.

And so we pass from land to land,
Each age, to find its noblest band
Still building up that edifice
Whose culmination lies in this,
Nor need we blush for that good band
Who took the torch in our own land:
Our Hawthorne, flowering like a rose
Amid New England's rocks and snows;
And Irving with his fancy fine,
And Bryant, bard of sturdy line;
Our Franklin with his golden sense;
Our Webster's stirring eloquence;
Our Lincoln, saviour of the slave,
And scores of others true and brave.

This palace, whose foundations stand
Upon the peers of every land,
Is filled with gems of every kind
Which human intellect has mined.
'Tis truly called the House of Knowledge
Whose every window is a college.
And into it all sons of earth
May enter if they prove their worth.