I AM an ancient reluctant conscript.

On the soup wagons of Xerxes I was a cleaner of pans.

On the march of Miltiades' phalanx I had a haft and head;
I had a bristling gleaming spear-handle.

Red-headed Caesar picked me for a teamster.
He said, "Go to work, you Tuscan *******,
Rome calls for a man who can drive horses."

The units of conquest led by Charles the Twelfth,
The whirling whimsical Napoleonic columns:
They saw me one of the horseshoers.

I trimmed the feet of a white horse Bonaparte swept the night stars with.

Lincoln said, "Get into the game; your nation takes you."
And I drove a wagon and team and I had my arm shot off
At Spottsylvania Court House.

I am an ancient reluctant conscript.

I stood on Marathon's old plain
and saw Miltiades again,
before ten thousand men of Athens;
and, bolder than their thousand spears, Plateans,
a little band who, too, would die
and on those marshes, ******, lie
rather than exchange the sword
for chains and curses of a Persian lord.

Many are the years since then.
But still their spirit breathes, for when
we contemplate their great success,
unknowingly their ancient souls we bless.