A Memorial Tribute 3
Or perhaps, rather than these lines of Swinburne, the lines
of Simonides; may we, too, carry on, because
These men on entering Death’s o’ershadowing gloom
Lustre undimmed on their dear homeland shed.
But divine honour freed them from their doom
In glory ; tho’ they died they are not dead.
The whole earth is their sepulchre; and their story is not graven
only on stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without
visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men’s lives. For you
now it remains to rival what they have done, and, knowing the secret
of happiness to be freedom and the secret of freedom a brave heart,
squarely to face the future and all its perils.—Pericles to the
Athenians.