POEMS OF JAMES RYDER RANDALL
Redeems the land with a renewing birth,
Its faults forgotten in thy faultless worth!
Manes of the brave! your gore’s not vainly shed—
O stern baptism on a nation’s head!
Yet did that blood quench Persia’s fiery pride
And seal the spot where heroes fell—not died,
Leaving thy name a watchword to the free—
Unmouldering Record! lone Thermopylae!
Turn from this scene. Exulting to the skies
A temple flits before the captive eyes,
Unrivalled, chaste e’en as the new-born day,
In perfect form it looms along the way—
Unrivalled whole—unrivalled in decay!
Behold the Parthenon—the miracle—the fair!
Look once again. What ruin breedeth there!
A pilfered wreck, a desecrated shrine,
Sport of the blast, polluted yet divine—
The mind untouched from a dismembered whole—
How glorious yet, thou Mecca of the Soul!
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