The more it costs we know she is more _dear_.

The story is a Grecian one,
The author's name I cannot tell;
Perhaps it was old Xenophon
Or Aristotle, I can't dwell
On trifles; perhaps Plutarch wrote the story:
At any rate its years have made it hoary.

The Greeks were famous in those days
In arts, in letters and in arms;
Quite plain and simple in their ways;
With their own hands they tilled their farms;
Some dressed the vine, some plow'd the ocean's wave;
Some wrote, were orators, or teachers grave.

They were Republicans, in fact;
The Persians might have called them "black
Republicans;" they never lacked
The power to beat a foeman back.
Thermopylæ, so famed in Grecian story
Is but another name for martial glory.

A busy hive to work or fight,
Like our New England bold and strong;
A little frantic for the right,
As sternly set against the wrong;
And when for right they drew the sword, we know,
Stopped not to count the number of the foe.