George Washington

Can we add to his glory whose praise is ours?
Can we rate him anew in the lists of fame?
Shall our words or our deeds be the worthier flow'rs
To garland withal his immortal name?
With the breath of the cycle that saw him grow
In wisdom and honors he passed away,
And the cankering years that deface as they go
Still leave us his spirit untouched of clay.
Still gathers the tone that proclaims him great;
Still spreads out the Nation that guards his love;
Still moves with the rhythmical tread of fate
The march of the People he stands above.
Not a cold, iron figure of kingly grain,
With a flinty face and a biting sword;
Not the rude wolf-suckling of savage strain
That Rome first knew for its fighting lord;
But a man's large form with its sense of might,
Whose lips seem voicing a people's psalm,
Whose eyes shine clear with a gracious light,
Whose brow is stamped with a godlike calm.
Yet, when out of the New World's travail of birth
A mail-clad Liberty-child was born,
And over the utmost bounds of the earth
A voice of the free was heard in the morn,
He stood in the terrible gap of war
As stout at the heart as stalwart of limb,
And within their red lines stretching wide and far
The tyrants kept vigil in fear of him.
For always he pressed to the marked-out goal
In the awful might of the Pure and Just;
Lofty, unflinching for strong of soul
With that which is grander than courage trust.
Trust in the cause that had armed his hand,
Trust in the people its blood that spills,
His sword and his word taught the battling land,
God will not revoke what the people wills.
As he who looks forth from a mountain peak
Sees over the hills to the rising sun,
While down in the valleys the misty reek
Hangs low, and they know not that night is done:
So, often when those whom he led could but see
The smoke of disaster roll over the skies,
A gleam of the far away victory
They caught in the blaze of his blenchless eyes.
He won and he laid down his stainless sword;
Supreme he relinquished the ruler's seat.
Plain man in pure honor, who ruled and obeyed
The kings of the earth are but dwarfs at his feet.