| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900. |
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| 919. The Heroic Age |
| | | By Richard Watson Gilder |
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| HE speaks not well who doth his time deplore, | |
| Naming it new and little and obscure, | |
| Ignoble and unfit for lofty deeds. | |
| All times were modern in the time of them, | |
| And this no more than others. Do thy part | 5 |
| Here in the living day, as did the great | |
| Who made old days immortal! So shall men, | |
| Gazing long back to this far-looming hour, | |
| Say: “Then the time when men were truly men; | |
| Though wars grew less, their spirits met the test | 10 |
| Of new conditions; conquering civic wrong; | |
| Saving the state anew by virtuous lives; | |
| Guarding the country’s honor as their own, | |
| And their own as their country’s and their sons’; | |
| Defying leaguëd fraud with single truth; | 15 |
| Not fearing loss, and daring to be pure. | |
| When error through the land raged like a pest, | |
| They calmed the madness caught from mind to mind | |
| By wisdom drawn from eld, and counsel sane; | |
| And as the martyrs of the ancient world | 20 |
| Gave Death for man, so nobly gave they Life: | |
Those the great days, and that the heroic age.”
ATHENS, 1896. | |
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