Page:Pocahontas, and Other Poems.djvu/189

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FEMALE EDUCATION FOR GREECE. 173

And thou, meek martyr to the hemlock draught, Whose fearless voice for truth and virtue strove, Whose stainless life, and death serene, have taught The Christian world to wonder and to love, Come forth, with Plato, from thy hallow'd grove, And bring that golden chain by Time unriven, Which round this pendent universe ye wove, For still our homage to your lore is given, And your pure wisdom priz'd, next to the page of heaven.

See, gathering round, high shades of glorious birth Do throng the scene. Hath aught disturb 'd their rest ? Why brings Philosophy her idols forth With pensive brow, in solemn silence drest ? And see he comes, who o'er the sophist's crest Did pour the simple element of light, Reduce the complex thought to reason's test, And stand severe in intellectual might, Undazzled, undeceiv'd, the peerless Stagyrite.

Those demi-gods of Greece ! How sad they rove Where, temple-crown ! d, the Acropolis aspires, Or green Hymettus rears her honied grove, Or glows the Parthenon 'neath sunset fires, Or where the olive, ere its prime, expires By Moslem hatred scath'd. Methinks they seem Westward to gaze, with unreveal'd desires, Whether they roam by pure Ilyssus' stream, Or haunt with troubled step the shades of Academe.

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