Poems of Nature (Thoreau)/Greece

by Henry David Thoreau

For other versions of this work, see Greece.

GREECE

When life contracts into a vulgar span,
And human nature tires to be a man,
⁠I thank the Gods for Greece,
⁠That permanent realm of peace.
For as the rising moon far in the night
Chequers the shade with her forerunning light,
So in my darkest hour my senses seem
To catch from her Acropolis a gleam.

Greece, who am I that should remember thee,
Thy Marathon, and thy Thermopylae?
Is my life vulgar, my fate mean,
Which on such golden memories can lean?