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78 Of many, may be mine; and be it ’s, That slanderer of the memory of our fathers.

And who were they, our fathers? In their veins
 * Ran the best blood of England’s gentlemen;

Her bravest in the strife on battle-plains,
 * Her wisest in the strife of voice and pen;

Her holiest, teaching, in her holiest fanes,
 * The lore that led to martyrdom; and when

On this side ocean slept their wearied sails, And their toil-bells woke up our thousand hills and dales,

Shamed they their fathers? Ask the village-spires
 * Above their Sabbath-homes of praise and prayer;

Ask of their children’s happy household-fires,
 * And happier harvest noons; ask summer’s air,

Made merry by young voices, when the wires
 * Of their school-cages are unloosed, and dare

Their slanderers’ breath to blight the memory That o’er their graves is “growing green to see!”

If he has “writ their annals true;” if they,
 * The Christian-sponsored and the Christian-nursed,