Washington
Take, countryman, thy glass in hand,
And drink with the American
Unto the Father of his Land,
Creator of his country’s plan.
Where, in the nations’ Pantheon,
Thy honored Vasa proudly towers
He rears to his great Washington
A monument, the peer of ours.
O Freedom, child of heavenly birth,
Sent to release a shackled race,
Erase the boundaries of earth,
And bring the nations face to face;
Where’er thy spirit men inspired
To battle ’gainst a tyrant’s might,
The pulses leap, the souls are fired
With shouts for Victory and Right!
’Twas by thy stroke, O Liberty,
The noble patriot was knighted,
Who glorified with victory
Virginian fields, by tyrants blighted;
’Twas at thy call he rose and fought
To settle internecine quarrels
And then his peaceful homestead sought,
His temples wreathed with Fabian laurels.
’Twas thy commandments that he taught
When for a people, tried and loyal,
The laws of right he wisely wrought,
A nation’s chief, benign, but royal,
In council with the wise and good,
Enfolded in the statesman’s toga,
He sat as firm as e’er he stood
At Trenton, Yorktown, Saratoga.
When bubbles of a moment’s fame
Must pass oblivion’s fatal muster,
And many a toasted princely name
On memory’s vault shall lose its luster,
Then, graced by centuries of renown,
The civic chief shall sit for aye,
Without a scepter or a crown,
The sovereign prince of Liberty.
In memory’s pilgrimage we wend
To where the sod the hero pillows.
No mourning flowers their fragrance lend,
Nor grace his tomb the weeping willows;
But love of law and liberty,
And good will unto every mortal
Guard against wrong and tyranny
The hero’s grave, his country’s portal.
This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.
| Original: |
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse |
|---|---|
| Translation: |
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in 1900, before the cutoff of January 1, 1929. The longest-living author of this work died in 1958, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 65 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse |
