BY NATHAN STONE

Great Washington is dead?

That is what they say, from Boston way

To Charleston bay.

They say he sleeps the final sleep

Within his castle keep of stone,

Swallowed by a moat of bottled Time.

Great Washington is dead?

That is what they want us to believe,

To spread the word across the land,

To place that story within the hand

Of every child and every future walking

To its grace across the sand.

Great Washington is dead?

No, he lies in a new seed time,

Planted by greater hands that watched him

While he lived and forged the future within

The walls of war.

A goodly rain, a burnished Phoenix sun

And he will come again.