But more magnanimous.  You see, my lads,
      ’T was an uncommon riot;
  The warlike tribes of Europe fight for “fads,”
      We fought for quiet.

  If we were victors, then we all must live
      With the same flag above us;
  ’Twas all in vain unless we now forgive
      And make them love us.

  Let kings keep trophies to display above
      Their doors like any savage;
  The freeman’s trophy is the foeman’s love,
      Despite war’s ravage.

  “Make treason odious?” My friends, you’ll find
      You can’t, in right and reason,
  While “Washington” and “treason” are combined—­
      “Hugo” and “treason.”

  All human governments must take the chance
      And hazard of sedition. 
  O, wretch! to pledge your manhood in advance
      To blind submission.

  It may be wrong, it may be right, to rise
      In warlike insurrection: 
  The loyalty that fools so dearly prize
      May mean subjection.

  Be loyal to your country, yes—­but how
    If tyrants hold dominion? 
  The South believed they did; can’t you allow
    For that opinion?

  He who will never rise though rulers plods
    His liberties despising
  How is he manlier than the sans culottes
    Who’s always rising?

  Give back the foolish flags whose bearers fell
    Too valiant to forsake them. 
  Is it presumptuous, this counsel?  Well,
    I helped to take them.

  HAEC FABULA DOCET.

  A rat who’d gorged a box of bane
  And suffered an internal pain,
  Came from his hole to die (the label
  Required it if the rat were able)
  And found outside his habitat
  A limpid stream.  Of bane and rat
  ’T was all unconscious; in the sun
  It ran and prattled just for fun. 
  Keen to allay his inward throes,
  The beast immersed his filthy nose
  And drank—­then, bloated by the stream,
  And filled with superheated steam,
  Exploded with a rascal smell,
  Remarking, as his fragments fell
  Astonished in the brook:  “I’m thinking
  This water’s damned unwholesome drinking!”

  EXONERATION.

  When men at candidacy don’t connive,
    From that suspicion if their friends would free ’em,
  The teeth and nails with which they did not strive
    Should be exhibited in a museum.

  AZRAEL.

  The moon in the field of the keel-plowed main
    Was watching the growing tide: 
  A luminous peasant was driving his wain,
    And he offered my soul a ride.

  But I nourished a sorrow uncommonly tall,
    And I fixed him fast with mine eye. 
  “O, peasant,” I sang with a dying fall,
    “Go leave me to sing and die.”

  The water was weltering round my feet,
    As prone on the beach they lay. 
  I chanted my death-song loud and sweet;
    “Kioodle, ioodle, iay!”