Poems Now First Collected
Song Composed for Washington’s Birthday
and Respectfully Inscribed to the Officers and Members of the
Washington Light Infantry of Charleston, February 22, 1859
A hundred years and more ago
A little child was born—
To-day, with pomp of martial show,
We hail his natal morn.
Who guessed as that poor infant wept
Upon a woman’s knee,
A nation from the centuries stept
As weak and frail as he?
Who saw the future on his brow
Upon that happy morn?
We are a mighty nation now
Because that child was born.
To him, and to his spirit’s scope,
Besides a glorious home,
We owe that what we have and hope
Are more than Greece and Rome.