A man came running from Thermopylæ,
And said, "'Tis done; they all were slain but me."
Why did his fellow-Spartans sneer and hiss,
Recoil from him, as from a leper's kiss,
And say, "Take back your blood, you craven drone,
And leave it where your comrades lost their own?"
It was because the unhappy man had sped
Away from death, and left his comrades dead.
The Grecian mother, with a tearless eye,
Sent her son warward, with this mandate high: