Page:Maryland, my Maryland, and other poems - Randall - 1908.pdf/124

 Redeems the land with a renewing birth, Its faults forgotten in thy faultless worth! Manes of the brave! your gore’s not vainly shed— O stern baptism on a nation’s head! Yet did that blood quench Persia’s fiery pride And seal the spot where heroes fell—not died, Leaving thy name a watchword to the free— Unmouldering Record! lone Thermopylae! Turn from this scene. Exulting to the skies A temple flits before the captive eyes, Unrivalled, chaste e’en as the new-born day, In perfect form it looms along the way— Unrivalled whole—unrivalled in decay! Behold the Parthenon—the miracle—the fair! Look once again. What ruin breedeth there! A pilfered wreck, a desecrated shrine, Sport of the blast, polluted yet divine— The mind untouched from a dismembered whole— How glorious yet, thou Mecca of the Soul!