Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FRANCISCA'S THANKSGIVING, by AMELIA WOODWARD TRUESDELL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FRANCISCA'S THANKSGIVING, by                    
First Line: When the hordes of barbarian persians
Last Line: And the triumphs the future shall hold.
Subject(s): Holidays; San Francisco Earthquake And Fire (1906); Thanksgiving; Turkey


When the hordes of barbarian Persians
Laid the beauty of Athens in waste,
With her sons came their women and children
Making vows to the gods, and in haste
Bearing stones for the walls and the turrets,
Till a city arose at whose shrine
The centuries kneeled in unlading
Their argosies' purple and wine.
Then Æschylus, reading his vision,
Sang the song of the city's new morn;
Myron felt for the soul of the marble
Which in Phidias later was born.

By a power more dread than an army
Destruction has come to our gates,
And it struck with a terror and blindness
Which tossed us like toys of the Fates.
But give thanks that man's greatest is left us,
The strength and the courage to do,
A purpose as grim as our fathers'
Who builded good cites and true.
Give thanks for the grain's golden harvest,
Sun-garner of wind-rippled fields;
For the opened storehouse of the mountains
Where each year its new treasure up-yields.

True children of Argonauts are we,
And our struggles to theirs are akin;
Though the trials be hosts like the Persians,
An Athenian valor shall win.
Then Art shall rise from the ashes,
An immortal unhurt by her scars;
And a voice shall be heard in the ruins
With a song that shall quicken the stars.
As with vows, the builders of Athens
Made a shrine of each wall they upraised,
So may we make our city a temple
To the God whom our fathers have praised.

Then spread we the feast of Thanksgiving
With a hymn for the days of old;
Cheers shall ring for the arduous Present
And the triumphs the Future shall hold.





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