Why blend these themes with my allotted task?
My answer's brief, 'tis, Citizens, because
I see fierce warfare made upon the Laws.
A people's poets are that people's seers,
The prophet's faculty, in part, is theirs,
And thus 'tis fit that from this statue's base,
Beneath great Washington's majestic face,
That I should point the dangers which menace
Our social temple's symmetry and grace.

* * * * *

But here I pause, for happier omens look,
And playing Flamen turn to Nature's book:
Where late rich Autumn sat on golden throne,
A stern usurper makes the crown his own;
The courtier woodlands, robbed of all their state,
Stripped of their pomp, look grim and desolate;
Reluctant conscripts, clad in icy mail,
Their captive pleadings rise on every gale.
Now mighty oaks stand like bereaved Lears;
Pennons are furled on all the sedgy spears
Where the sad river glides between its banks,
Like beaten general twixt his pompless ranks;
And the earth's bosom, clad in armor now,
Bids stern defiance to the iron plough,
While o'er the fields so desolate and damp
Invading Winter spreads his hostile camp.[4]

And as he shakes his helmet's snowy plume