James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
February 22George Washington
By John Hall Ingham (18601931)(Born Feb. 22, 1732)
T
Proclaimed the dawn of Liberty begun;
Who dared a deed, and died when it was done;
Patient in triumph, temperate in power,—
Not striving like the Corsican to tower
To heaven, nor like great Philip’s greater son
To win the world and weep for worlds unwon,
Or lose the star to revel in the flower.
The lives that serve the eternal verities
Alone do mould mankind. Pleasure and pride
Sparkle awhile and perish, as the spray
Smoking across the crests of cavernous seas
Is impotent to hasten or delay
The everlasting surges of the tide.
That Man at last, beneath the churchyard spire,
Might be once more the worm, the rock, the tree.