Classic Poem

What memories haunt the venerable pile!
It is the mighty treasury of the past,
Where England garners up her glorious dead.
The ancient chivalry are sleeping there —
Men who sought out the Turk in Palestine,
And laid the crescent low before the cross.
The sea has sent her victories: those aisles
Wave with the banners of a thousand fights.
There, too, are the mind's triumphs — in those tombs
Sleep poets and philosophers, whose light
Is on the heaven of our intellect.
The very names inscribed on those old walls
Make the place sacred.