Presidents Day

Welome to our webpage for Presidents Day that was established to honor George Washington's Birthday. This term was informally coined in a deliberate attempt to use the holiday to honor multiple presidents, and is virtually always used that way today and is now a United States federal holiday celebrated on the third Monday of February and celebrated throughout many states in America. These are free for you to use for non commercial purpose.









Presidents Day
**
THE PRESIDENT WAS WITHOUT PRECEDENT

The President lacking precedent
at the time that he took on the post.
Likewise 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 make
And so he became The Fantastic 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 tiny:
The sense of a Center the fates
must bless for the excellent 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 more forceful than fears;
Till the additional fantastic president we
Now jam into one day for two
Kept the Union together and free,
The gift of the first to renew.

**

Presidents Day

Ode for General Washington’s Birthday

No Spartan tube, no Attic shell,
No lyre Aeolian I awake;
Tis liberty’s bold note I swell,
Thy harp, Columbia, let me take!
See gathering thousands, while I sing,
A broken chain exulting bring,
And dash it in a tyrant’s face,
And dare him to his very beard,
And tell him he no more is feared—
No more the despot of Columbia’s race!
A tyrant’s proudest insults brav’d,
They shout—a People freed! They hail an Empire saved.
Where is man’s god-like form?
Where is that brow erect and bold—
That eye that can unmov’d behold
The wildest rage, the loudest storm
That e’er created fury dared to raise?
Avaunt! thou caitiff, servile, base,
That tremblest at a despot’s nod,
Yet, crouching under the iron rod,
Canst laud the hand that struck th’ insulting blow!
Art thou of man’s Imperial line?
Dost boast that countenance divine?
Each skulking feature answers, No!
But come, ye sons of Liberty,
Columbia’s offspring, brave as free,
In danger’s hour still flaming in the van,
Ye know, and dare maintain, the Royalty of Man!
Alfred! on thy starry throne,
Surrounded by the tuneful choir,
The bards that erst have struck the patriot lyre,
And rous’d the freeborn Briton’s soul of fire,
No more thy England own!
Dare injured nations form the great design,
To make detested tyrants bleed?
Thy England execrates the glorious deed!
Beneath her hostile banners waving,
Every pang of honour braving,
England in thunder calls, “The tyrant’s cause is mine!
That hour accurst how did the fiends rejoice
And hell, thro’ all her confines, raise the exulting voice,
That hour which saw the generous English name
Linkt with such damned deeds of everlasting shame!
Thee, Caledonia! thy wild heaths among,
Fam’d for the martial deed, the heaven-taught song,
To thee I turn with swimming eyes;
Where is that soul of Freedom fled?
Immingled with the mighty dead,
Beneath that hallow’d turf where Wallace lies
Hear it not, WALLACE! in thy bed of death.
Ye babbling winds! in silence sweep,
Disturb not ye the hero’s sleep,
Nor give the coward secret breath!
Is this the ancient Caledonian form,
Firm as the rock, resistless as the storm?
Show me that eye which shot immortal hate,
Blasting the despot’s proudest bearing;
Show me that arm which, nerv’d with thundering fate,
Crush’d Usurpation’s boldest daring!—
Dark-quench’d as yonder sinking star,
No more that glance lightens afar;
That palsied arm no more whirls on the waste of war.
Robert Burns

**
Presidents Day

As I say every year on this day, Happy Birthday, G. Washington! This country, of which you are, or once were, deservedly called the father, has long departed from anything you could care to be a part of. Yet your example lives on, and if there is any remnant of political virtue left in America, in some sense it draws on you as its source. Truly you are unique among all political figures in history. As was said in a famous poem by a decadent poet whom your example raised above himself:

**Presidents Day

Where may the weary eye repose
When gazing on the great,
Where neither guilty glory glows
Nor despicable state?
Yes, one, the first, the last, the best,
The Cincinnatus of the West
Whom envy dared not hate,
Bequeathed the name of Washington
To make men blush there was but one!

**

Presidents Day

Presidents Day