Poem (courtesy of A. Sullivan)

Honor to those who in their lives
demarcate and guard a Thermopylae.
Never swerving from duty,
just and upright in all their acts,
but compassionate and sad nevertheless;
generous when they are rich,
when poorgenerous again in small ways,
again rushing to help as much as they can;
always speaking truthbut with no hatred for liars.
And more honor is fitting for them
when they foresee (and many do foresee)
that Efialtis will appear in the end,
and in the end the Medes will break through.
-Thermopylae, C.P Cavafy