Classic Poem

Great ruler, these are simple gifts to bring to thee, —
Thee, — doubly great, the land's embodied will;
And simpler still the song I fain would sing thee:
In higher towers let greater poets ring thee
Heroic chimes on Fame's immortal hill.

A decade of the years its flight has taken.
Since I beheld, and pictured with my pen
How yet the land on ruin's brink might waken
To find her temples rudely seized and shaken
By traitorous demons in the forms of men.

And I foresaw thy coming, — even pointed
The region where the day would find its man
To reconstruct what treason had disjointed.
I saw thy brow by Honesty anointed,
While Wisdom taught thee all her noblest plan.

Thy natal stars by angels' hands suspended,
A holy trine, where Faith, and Hope, and Love —
By these celestial guides art thou attended,
Shedding perpetual lustre, calm and splendid,
Around thy path wherever thou dost move.

No earthly lore of any art or science
Can fill the places of these heavenly three;
Faith gives thy soul serene and fixed reliance;
Hope to the darkest trial bids defiance;
Love tempers all with her sublime decree.

'Tis fitting, then, these relics full of story,
Telling ancestral tales of land and sea, —
Each fragment a sublime memento mori
Of heroes mantled in immortal glory, —
Should be consigned, great patriot, unto thee