Our cities taught what conquered cities feel
By aediles chosen that they might safely steal;
And gold, however got, a title fair
To such respect as only gold can bear. 
I seem to see this; how shall I gainsay
What all our journals tell me every day? 
Poured our young martyrs their high-hearted blood
That we might trample to congenial mud 170
The soil with such a legacy sublimed? 
Methinks an angry scorn is here well-timed: 
Where find retreat?  How keep reproach at bay? 
Where’er I turn some scandal fouls the way.

Dear friend, if any man I wished to please,
’Twere surely you whose humor’s honied ease
Flows flecked with gold of thought, whose generous mind
Sees Paradise regained by all mankind,
Whose brave example still to vanward shines,
Cheeks the retreat, and spurs our lagging lines. 180
Was I too bitter?  Who his phrase can choose
That sees the life-blood of his dearest ooze? 
I loved my Country so as only they
Who love a mother fit to die for may;
I loved her old renown, her stainless fame,—­
What better proof than that I loathed her shame? 
That many blamed me could not irk me long,
But, if you doubted, must I not be wrong? 
’Tis not for me to answer; this I know. 
That man or race so prosperously low 190
Sunk in success that wrath they cannot feel,
Shall taste the spurn of parting Fortune’s heel;
For never land long lease of empire won
Whose sons sate silent when base deeds were done.

POSTSCRIPT, 1887

Curtis, so wrote I thirteen years ago,
Tost it unfinished by, and left it so;
Found lately, I have pieced it out, or tried,
Since time for callid juncture was denied. 
Some of the verses pleased me, it is true,
And still were pertinent,—­those honoring you. 200
These now I offer:  take them, if you will,
Like the old hand-grasp, when at Shady Hill
We met, or Staten Island, in the days
When life was its own spur, nor needed praise. 
If once you thought me rash, no longer fear;
Past my next milestone waits my seventieth year. 
I mount no longer when the trumpets call;
My battle-harness idles on the wall,
The spider’s castle, camping-ground of dust,
Not without dints, and all in front, I trust. 210
Shivering sometimes it calls me as it hears
Afar the charge’s tramp and clash of spears;
But ’tis such murmur only as might be
The sea-shell’s lost tradition of the sea,
That makes me muse and wonder Where? and When? 
While from my cliff I watch the waves of men
That climb to break midway their seeming gain,
And think it triumph if they shake their chain. 
Little I ask of Fate; will she refuse
Some days of reconcilement with the Muse? 220
I take my reed again and blow it free
Of dusty silence, murmuring, ‘Sing to me!’
And, as its stops my curious touch retries,
The stir of earlier instincts I surprise,—­
Instincts, if less imperious, yet more strong,
And happy in the toil that ends with song.