THREE MEMORIAL POEMS

If I let fall a word of bitter mirth

When public shames more shameful pardon won,

Some have misjudged me, and my service done,

If small, yet faithful, deemed of little worth:

Through veins that drew their life from Western earth

Two hundred years and more my blood hath run

In no polluted course from sire to son;

And thus was I predestined ere my birth

To love the soil wherewith my fibres own

Instinctive sympathies; yet love it so

As honor would, nor lightly to dethrone

Judgment, the stamp of manhood, nor forego

The son's right to a mother dearer grown

With growing knowledge and more chaste than snow.