In conclusion, will you let me offer you the last ‘modern invocation’ to the poet—shall we say in modern phrase—of the future? ‘Come, poet, come’—no, I will trouble you only with a few verses at the end:—
In vain I seem to call, and yet
Think not the living years forget:
Ages of heroes fought and fell,
That Homer, in the end, might tell;
O’er grovelling generations past
The Doric column rose at last.
A thousand hearts on thousand years
Had wasted labour, hopes, and fears,
Knells, laughters, and unmeaning tears,