A Poem For Washington's Birthday

THE PRESIDENT WAS WITHOUT PRECEDENT

The President was without precedent
At the time that he took on the post.
Equally homespun and elegant,
He struck the precisely right note.

Refusing the power of kings,
He yet understood that the State
Required what reverence brings:
A loyalty one can create.

And so he became The Great Leader,
The focus of wide adulation.
Yet only a one-time repeater,
He served not the man, but the nation.

He gave to the State what the states
Could only recopy writ small:
The sense of a Center the fates
Must bless for the good of us all.

He played well the hero who held
The Union together those years,
Until the still-thin mixture jelled,
And fact was more forceful than fears;

Till the other great president we
Now jam into one day for two
Kept the Union together and free,
The gift of the first to renew.

By: Nicholas Gordon

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Copyright by Nicholas Gordon. The poem appears on the Web site Poems for Free (www.poemsforfree.com) under "Other Holidays" (www.poemsforfree.com/holidaypoems.html) at www.poemsforfree.com/thepre.html