AT THE DINNER TO THE PRESIDENT, <br />BOSTON, JUNE 26, 1877 <br /> <br />How to address him? awkward, it is true <br />Call him 'Great Father,' as the Red Men do? <br />Borrow some title? this is not the place <br />That christens men Your Highness and Your Grace; <br />We tried such names as these awhile, you know, <br />But left them off a century ago. <br /> <br />His Majesty? We've had enough of that <br />Besides, that needs a crown; he wears a hat. <br />What if, to make the nicer ears content, <br />We say His Honesty, the President? <br /> <br />Sir, we believed you honest, truthful, brave, <br />When to your hands their precious trust we gave, <br />And we have found you better than we knew, <br />Braver, and not less honest, not less true! <br />So every heart has opened, every hand <br />Tingles with welcome, and through all the land <br />All voices greet you in one broad acclaim, <br />Healer of strife! Has earth a nobler name? <br /> <br />What phrases mean you do not need to learn; <br />We must be civil, and they serve our turn <br />'Your most obedient humble' means--means what? <br />Something the well-bred signer just is not. <br /> <br />Yet there are tokens, sir, you must believe; <br />There is one language never can deceive <br />The lover knew it when the maiden smiled; <br />The mother knows it when she clasps her child; <br />Voices may falter, trembling lips turn pale, <br />Words grope and stumble; this will tell their tale <br />Shorn of all rhetoric, bare of all pretence, <br />But radiant, warm, with Nature's eloquence. <br />Look in our eyes! Your welcome waits you there,-- <br />North, South, East, West, from all and everywhere!<br /><br />Oliver Wendell Holmes<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-rutherford-birchard-hayes/
