The President Was Without Precedent

Subscribe to this site on Substack

Subscribe to this site on YouTube

Subscribe to this site on Medium

Follow this site on Facebook

Follow this site on Instagram

Hear me read
the poem as
an MP3 file.

Watch me read
the poem as
a YouTube video.

Video and Audio Music:
English Country Garden
By Aaron Kenny.
Music free to use
at YouTube.

Alpha List

Poems for
Presidents Day

About This
Site

Poems for
Free

Copyright by

The President was without precedent
At the time that he took on the post.
Equally 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 create. And so he became The Great 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 small:
The sense of a Center the fates
Must bless for the good 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 forceful than fears; Till the other great president we
Now jam into one day for two
Kept the Union together and free,
His own blood the ultimate glue.

Copyright by Nicholas Gordon. Free for personal or non-commercial use.

[about this site] [poems for free] [poem of the week]
[site policy] [about me] [links]