Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years
Which keep in trust your storied tombs,
Behold! Your sisters bring their tears
And these memorial blooms.
Small tribute! but your shades will smile
More proudly on these wreathes to-day,
Than when some cannon-molded pile
Shall overlook this bay.
Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!
There is no holier spot of ground
Than where defeated valor lies,
By mourning beauty crowned.
FOOTNOTE:
[32] By Henry Timrod, an American poet (1829-1867).
THE CHARIOT RACE [33]
Orestes? He is dead. I will tell all as it happen
He journeyed forth to attend the great games which Hellas counts her pride, to join the Delphic contests. There he heard the herald's voice, with loud and clear command, proclaim, as coming first, the chariot race, and so he entered, radiant, every eye admiring as he passed. And in the race he equaled all the promise of his form in those his rounds, and so with noblest prize of conquest left the ground.
Summing up in fewest words what many scarce could tell, I know of none in strength and act like him. And having won the prize in all the fivefold forms of race which the umpires had proclaimed, he then was hailed, proclaimed an Argive, and his name Orestes, the son of mighty Agamemnon, who once led Hellas's glorious host.