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Those olden times! how many words are spent
In weak regret and shallow argument
To prove them wiser, happier than our own!
The oldest moment that the world has known
Is passing now. Those vaunted times were young;
Their wisdom from unlettered peasants sprung;
Their laws from nobles arrogant and rude;
Their justice force, their whole achievement crude.

"With men the old are wise: why change the rule
When nations speak, and send the old to school?
Respect the past for all the good it knew:
Give noble lives and struggling truths their due;
But ask what freedom knew the common men
"Who served and bled and won the victories then?
The leaders are immortal, but the hordes
They led to death were simply human swords.
Unknowing what they fought for, why they fell.

What change has come? Imperial Europe tell!
Death's warders cry from twenty centuries' peaks:
Plataea's field the word to Plevna speaks;