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Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  A Great Name

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

A Great Name

By Park Benjamin (1809–1864)

[Born in Demerara, British Guiana, 1809. Died in New York, N. Y., 1864.]

TIME! thou destroyest the relics of the past,

And hidest all the footprints of thy march

On shattered column and on crumbled arch,

By moss and ivy growing green and fast.

Hurled into fragments by the tempest-blast,

The Rhodian monster lies; the obelisk,

That with sharp line divided the broad disk

Of Egypt’s sun, down to the sands was cast:

And where these stood, no remnant-trophy stands,

And even the art is lost by which they rose:

Thus, with the monuments of other lands,

The place that knew them now no longer knows.

Yet triumph not, O, Time; strong towers decay,

But a great name shall never pass away!