For this I am willing to take your blame
Unless you have sometimes done the same.
To be a fool of an A1 brand
I'm not sufficiently clever,
But I often have tried my 'prentice hand
In a callow and crude endeavor;
A fool with the money for which I've toiled,
A fool with the word I've spoken,
And the foolish fool who is fooled and foiled
On a maiden's finger broken.
If you never yourself have made a slip,
I'm willing to watch you curl your lip.
And yet my blood and my bone resist
If you dub me fool and liar.
I set my teeth and double my fist
And my brow is flushed with fire.
You I deny and you I defy
And I vow I will make you rue it;
And I lie when I say that I never lie,
Which proves me a fool to do it!
You may jerk your thumb at me and grin
If liar and fool you never have been.
THE CONSERVATIVE.
At twenty, as you proudly stood
And read your thesis, "Brotherhood,"
If I remember right, you saw
The fatuous faults of social law.