What makes a city great and strong?
Not architecture’s graceful strength,
Nor factories’ extended length,
But men who see the civic wrong
And give their lives to make it right,
And turn its darkness into light.
What makes a city full of power?
Not wealth’s display nor titled fame,
Not fashion’s loudly-boasted claim,
But women, rich in virtue’s dower,
Whose homes, tho humble, still are great
Because of service to the state.
What makes a city men can love?
Not things that charm the outward sense,
Nor gross display of opulence,
But right, that wrong can not remove,
And truth, that faces civic fraud
And smites it in the name of God.
This is a city that shall stand,
A light upon a nation’s hill,
A voice that evil can not still,
A source of blessing to the land;
Its strength not brick, nor stone, nor wood,
But justice, love and brotherhood.
--_Author Unknown._
(1311)
=Greatness Unrecognized=--See HELP, UNEXPECTED.