12 Except the shards,
13 Of crumbled vanity and pride.
14 If this is so, you must be proud,
15 Of knowing so much more than they,
16 Who wasted everybody's time and faith,
17 On building hapless empires out of amud.
18 Of course, they bfailed,
19 The truth is clear,
20 Since there are no cities anymore,
21 And the cdreams you have in your head today,
22 Are sure to live longer than theirs.
CHAPTER 111 The Greeks had a way they thought up for themselves,
2 And thought about for centuries.
3 They started with dheroes and etitans and fgods,
4 Who demanded the best they could give.
5 The best they could give turned out to be great,
6 And more than you'd ever expect,
7 A gfire that burned in the mind of man,
8 For more than two thousand years.
9 They started in darkness and thought toward the light,
10 hIn spite of the pain, and the rock, and the blood,
11 And a sun that hurled iwings from the clouds.
12 But they came back to earth with a jgolden torch,
13 Which they kshared with the worlds they knew.
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14 And if you want, you can laugh at their lquest,
15 And the mhorses they conjured to ride,
16 But if you look down on these children of ngods,
17 Who first dreamed of the mount that you sit with such pride?
CHAPTER 121 The Roman way was ambitious and hard,
2 oA road that they built one brick at a time,
3 Till it led to the ends of their pearth.
4 And they earned their domain with a world of work,
5 qA world of walls, and forced marches, and fear,
6 Which they battled and conquered in countless wars,
7 rFor the senate and people of Rome.
8 And when their colossus had weathered an age,
9 It turned wiser eyes toward the seast,
10 And traised up the word of one umurdered pariah,
11 Till it spoke to the millions they'd bound in dread,
12 And freed them to build a new way of their own.
13 Now you are free to shake your head,
14 At the crumbling ruins of an empire long gonev,
15 And recite the wold lessons of power's decline,
16 Seeing no more than rot in this ancient retreat,
17 From brutal command to an infant faith,
18 In the xcarpenter who breached their walls,
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