To Ion Thynne

Fain to know golden things, fain to grow wise, Fain to achieve the secret of fair souls: His thought, scarce other lore need solemnize, Whom Virgil calms, whom Sophocles controls:

Whose conscience Æschylus, a warrior voice, Enchaunted hath with majesties of doom: Whose melancholy mood can best rejoice, When Horace sings, and roses bower the tomb:

Who, following Caesar unto death, discerns What bitter cause was Rome's, to mourn that day: With austere Tacitus for master, learns The look of empire in its proud decay:

Whom dread Lucretius of the mighty line Hath awed, but not borne down: who loves the flame, That leaped within Catullus the divine, His glory, and his beauty, and his shame:

Who dreams with Plato and, transcending dreams, Mounts to the perfect City of true God: Who hails its marvellous and haunting gleams, Treading the steady air, as Plato trod:

Who with Thucydides pursues the way, Feeling the heart-beats of the ages gone: Till fall the clouds upon the Attic day, And Syracuse draw tears for Marathon:

To whom these golden things best give delight: The music of most sad Simonides; Propertius' ardent graces; and the might Of Pindar chaunting by the olive trees:

Livy, and Roman consuls purple swathed: Plutarch, and heroes of the ancient earth: And Aristophanes, whose laughter scathed The souls of fools, and pealed in lyric mirth:

Æolian rose-leaves blown from Sappho's isle; Secular glories of Lycean thought: Sallies of Lucian, bidding wisdom smile; Angers of Juvenal, divinely wrought:

Pleasant, and elegant, and garrulous, Pliny: crowned Marcus, wistful and still strong: Sicilian seas and their Theocritus, Pastoral singer of the last Greek song:

Herodotus, all simple and all wise: Demosthenes, a lightning flame of scorn: The surge of Cicero, that never dies: And Homer, grand against the ancient morn.