Earnestly answered the son:  “Nay, thou art mistaken, dear mother: 
One day is not like another.  The youth matures into manhood: 
Better in stillness oft ripening to deeds than when in the tumult
Wildering and wild of existence, that many a youth has corrupted. 
And, for as still as I am and was always, there yet in my bosom
Has such a heart been shaped as abhors all wrong and injustice;
And I have learned aright between worldly things to distinguish. 
Arm and foot, besides, have been mightily strengthened by labor. 
All this, I feel, is true:  I dare with boldness maintain it. 
Yet dost thou blame me with reason, O mother! for thou hast surprised me
Using a language half truthful and half that of dissimulation. 
For, let me honestly own,—­it is not the near danger that calls me
Forth from my father’s house; nor is it the lofty ambition
Helpful to be to my country, and terrible unto the foeman. 
They were but words that I spoke:  they only were meant for concealing
Those emotions from thee with which my heart is distracted;
And so leave me, O mother! for, since the wishes are fruitless
Which in my bosom I cherish, my life must go fruitlessly over. 
For, as I know, he injures himself who is singly devoted,
When for the common cause the whole are not working together.”

“Hesitate not,” replied thereupon the intelligent mother,
“Every thing to relate me, the smallest as well as the greatest. 
Men will always be hasty, their thoughts to extremes ever running: 
Easily out of their course the hasty are turned by a hindrance. 
Whereas a woman is clever in thinking of means, and will venture
E’en on a roundabout way, adroitly to compass her object. 
Let me know every thing, then; say wherefore so greatly excited
As I ne’er saw thee before, why thy blood is coursing so hotly,
Wherefore, against thy will, tears are filling thine eyes to o’erflowing.”

Then he abandoned himself, the poor boy, to his sorrow, and weeping,
Weeping aloud on his kind mother’s breast, he brokenly answered: 
“Truly my father’s words today have wounded me sorely,—­
Words which I have not deserved; not today, nor at any time have I: 
For it was early my greatest delight to honor my parents. 
No one knew more, so I deemed, or was wiser than those who begot me,
And had with strictness ruled throughout the dark season of childhood. 
Many the things, in truth, I with patience endured from my playmates,
When the good-will that I bore them they often requited with malice. 
Often I suffered their flings and their blows to pass unresented;
But if they ventured to ridicule father, when he of a Sunday
Home from Church would come, with his solemn and dignified bearing;
If they made fun of his cap-string, or laughed at the flowers of
                                                   the wrapper
He with such stateliness wore, which was given away