| |
| ’T WAS in the piping time of peace | |
| We trod the sacred soil of Greece, | |
| Nor thought, where the Ilissus runs, | |
| Of Teuton craft or Teuton guns; | |
| |
| Nor dreamt that, ere the year was spent, | 5 |
| Their iron challenge insolent | |
| Would round the world’s horizons pour, | |
| From Europe to the Australian shore. | |
| |
| The tides of war had ebb’d away | |
| From Trachis and Thermopylæ, | 10 |
| Long centuries had come and gone | |
| Since that fierce day at Marathon; | |
| |
| Freedom was firmly based, and we | |
| Wall’d by our own encircling sea; | |
| The ancient passions dead, and men | 15 |
| Battl’d with ledger and with pen. | |
| |
| So seem’d it, but to them alone | |
| The wisdom of the gods is known; | |
| Lest freedom’s price decline, from far | |
| Zeus hurl’d the thunderbolt of war. | 20 |
| |
| And so once more the Persian steel | |
| The armies of the Greeks must feel, | |
| And once again a Xerxes know | |
| The virtue of a Spartan foe. | |
| |
| Thus may the cloudy fates unroll’d | 25 |
| Retrace the starry circles old, | |
| And the recurrent heavens decree | |
| A Periclean dynasty. | |
| |
