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Of those who at Thermopylae were slain,

Glorious the doom, and beautiful the lot;

Their tomb an altar: men from tears refrain

To honor them, and praise, but mourn them not.

Such sepulchre, nor drear decay

Nor all-destroying time shall waste; this right have they.

Within their grave the home-bred glory

Of Greece was laid: this witness gives

Leonidas the Spartan, in whose story

A wreath of famous virtue ever lives.

1 Danaë was imprisoned in a tower by her father Acrisius, in consequence of an oracle which predicted that he would be slain by his daughter's son. Nevertheless Zeus visited her in a shower of gold, and she bore a son, Perseus. She and her child were then shut up in a chest by her father, and thrown out to sea.

2 When the Persians invaded Greece in 480 B. C., Leonidas, king of Sparta, went to hold the pass of Thermopylae against them. When by a circuitous route the Persians entered the pass, Leonidas dismissed his army except three hundred Spartans and seven hundred Thespians, who died on the field faithful to their trust.