To Archimedes once a scholar came,
Teach me, he said, the art
that won thy fame;-
The godlike art which gives such boons to toil,
And showers such fruit upon thy native soil;-
The godlike art that girt the town when all
Romes vengeance burst in thunder on the
wall!
Thou callst art godlike-it
is so, in truth,
And was, replied the master to the youth,
Ere yet its secrets were applied to use-
Ere yet it served beleaguered Syracuse:-
Askst thou from art, but what the art is
worth?
The fruit?-for fruit go cultivate the
earth.-
He who the goddess would aspire unto,
Must not the goddess as the woman woo!
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