Classic Poem

Have faith, my country! For thine ills and needs
Hail this evangel: Heart and mind and soul,
Thou shalt be saved by Beauty! All its Past
Is thine, and all its Future shall be.
The mould of Genius never has been broken.
Music and Art and Glory-wrought-in-words
Shall never cease to be thy living voices,
And raise up Freedom's leaders and defenders.
When praise of thy immensity shall pall,
And thou hast learned the Muses' loftier speech,
Thou shalt to thine imperial heirloom add
A yet diviner Greece, a fairer Italy;
And distant ages shall look back to thee
As we to these. Thy destiny is not
To perish with the memory of Tyre,
A meteor extinguished; but to live! —
Like that new planet that the midnight thrill
Of the devout astronomer discerned, —
Part of the infinite beauty of the sky.