James Russell Lowell

[Sidenote: July 8, 1775]
This is a fragment from the ode for the centenary of Washington's taking command of the American army at Cambridge.

  Soldier and statesman, rarest unison;
  High-poised example of great duties done
  Simply as breathing, a world's honors worn
  As life's indifferent gifts to all men born;
  Dumb for himself, unless it were to God,
  But for his barefoot soldiers eloquent,
  Tramping the snow to coral where they trod,
  Held by his awe in hollow-eyed content;
  Modest, yet firm as Nature's self; unblamed
  Save by the men his nobler temper shamed;
  Never seduced through show of present good
  By other than unsetting lights to steer
  New-trimmed in Heaven, nor than his steadfast mood
  More steadfast, far from rashness as from fear,
  Rigid, but with himself first, grasping still
  In swerveless poise the wave-beat helm of will;
  Not honored then or now because he wooed
  The popular voice, but that he still withstood;
  Broad-minded, higher-souled, there is but one
  Who was all this and ours, and all men's--WASHINGTON.