 | Three Hundred Sonnets |  |
150
WASHINGTON.
How might a Briton bless thee without blame,—Yet how deny thy worth his honest praise?
Great, virtuous, modest, whose unspotted name
Is stamp'd in gold upon the rolls of fame,
Whose brow is circled by her brightest bays,—
Part of thy glory still let England claim,
For still she loves her noble child always:
Where shall we search now, or in ancient days,
To find thy peer,—Leonidas in fight,
Pure Cincinnatus, meek retiring home,
Fabius the wise, or Cato the upright?
Nature hath cull'd the best of Greece and Rome,
And moulding all their virtues into one,
Gave to her infant world a Washington.
| Three Hundred Sonnets | |