| MY valiant fight! For I call it valiant, | |
| With my father’s beliefs from old Virginia: | |
| Hating slavery, but no less war. | |
| I, full of spirit, audacity, courage | |
| Thrown into life here in Spoon River, | 5 |
| With its dominant forces drawn from New England, | |
| Republicans, Calvinists, merchants, bankers, | |
| Hating me, yet fearing my arm. | |
| With wife and children heavy to carry— | |
| Yet fruits of my very zest of life. | 10 |
| Stealing odd pleasures that cost me prestige, | |
| And reaping evils I had not sown; | |
| Foe of the church with its charnel dankness, | |
| Friend of the human touch of the tavern; | |
| Tangled with fates all alien to me, | 15 |
| Deserted by hands I called my own. | |
| Then just as I felt my giant strength | |
| Short of breath, behold my children | |
| Had wound their lives in stranger gardens— | |
| And I stood alone, as I started alone! | 20 |
| My valiant life! I died on my feet, | |
| Facing the silence—facing the prospect | |
| That no one would know of the fight I made. | |
