HAMILTON
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his easy phrasing is a game of yoursThat you may win to lose. I beg your pardon,But you that have the sight will not employThe will to see with it. If you did so,There might be fewer ditches dug for othersIn your perspective; and there might be fewerContemporary motes of prejudiceBetween you and the man who made the dust.Call him a genius or a gentleman,A prophet or a builder, or what not,But hold your disposition off the balance,And weigh him in the light. Once (I believeI tell you nothing new to your surmise,Or to the tongues of towns and villages)I nourished with an adolescent fancy --Surely forgivable to you, my friend --An innocent and amiable convictionThat I was, by the grace of honest fortune,A savior at his elbow through the war,Where I might have observed, more than I did,Patience and wholesome passion. I was there,And for such honor I gave nothing worseThan some advice at which he may have smiled.I must have given a modicum besides,Or the rough interval between those daysAnd these would never have made for me my friends,Or enemies. I should be something somewhere --I say not what -- but I should not be hereIf he had not been there. Possibly, too,You might not -- or that Quaker with his cane.
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