Close Close Previous Poem Next Poem Follow Us on Twitter! Poem of the Day Award Follow Us on Facebook! Follow Us on Twitter! Follow Us on Pinterest! Follow Our Youtube Channel! Follow Our RSS Feed! envelope star quill

Thomas Jefferson Poems

Table of Contents

  1. The Jefferson Monument by Edward A. Allen
  2. Jefferson by Douglas Malloch
  3. The Louisiana Purchase by Douglas Malloch

  1. The Jefferson Monument

    by Edward A. Allen

    The granite of his native hills,
    Mother of monumental men,
    Virginia gave, whose page her Plutarch fills
    With undiminished deeds of sword and pen.

    More fitting far than molten bronze,
    Or polished marble carved by art,
    This monument of him who broke the bonds
    That bound in fetters every human heart.

    The column rises in all lands,
    When sinks the soldier to his rest;
    This cenotaph of rustic plainness stands
    To him who gave an empire to the West.

    Not with the blood of thousands slain,
    With children's cries and mothers, tears;
    The statesman's wisdom won this vast domain
    With gain of honest toil through peaceful years.

    The highest honor of his State
    And of his country came unsought;
    It was not this, O men, that made him great,
    Of this is nothing on the tablet wrought.

    His pen declared his country free,
    Equal and free his fellow-man:
    Freedom in church and state, the right to be,
    If Nature wills, the first American.

    'Tis well the shaft by him devised
    Rests here in Learning's classic shade;
    To be her patron was by him more prized
    Than all the honors that the nation paid.

    Oh, may his spirit linger near,
    As by old Monticello's slope;
    Inspire Missouri's sons who gather here
    With all the scholar's love, the patriot's hope.

    And He who holds the nation's fate
    Within the hollow of His hand
    Preserve the Union ever strong and great,
    And guide the statesmen of our native land.

  2. Jefferson

    by Douglas Malloch

    Thine not to lead to cannon mouth
    The fair-haired North, the dark-cheeked South-
    Thine but to win by peaceful ways
    These hills of iron, these fields of maize.

  3. The Louisiana Purchase

    by Douglas Malloch

    Like men who play at chess, great minds there are
    That play with nations—by a move or chance
    They make an epoch in the world's advance,
    They seal sweet peace or loosen bloody war.

    Yet they who play at chess and play at strife
    Know not the unrevealed, the ultimate.
    How much of human life appears as fate;
    How much of fate seems human-ordered life.

    The little things men oft esteem the most,
    And scorn the greater, vital things they do;
    How great is Austerlitz till Waterloo;
    How small are titles on an exile coast.

    The one-time bauble of a foreign throne—
    A throne unconscious of fore-doomed defeat—
    Arises now, its destiny complete,
    A greater empire than Napoleon's own.

Follow Us On: