No northerner in reminiscent speeches asserts pride in being of the old North

On the anniversary of Lee's surrender, an unremarkable date henceforth.

Oftener than he visits Grant's Tomb, he thinks of flying the Stars and Bars.

It was not the book-buyers of Richmond gave the victory to publishers.

Nothing can take away the proud, sad, honorable inheritance of defeat

Richly bequeathed to sons of the sons of Virginia, the Confederate state.

Theirs is a gentle man's angry dream of how nearly the war went otherwise.

Their women's too. Curved swords glint softer than Southern ladies' eyes.

The lost live in salvation looked ahead to, sweet illness never to be cured,

And never killing, body within body having its own health that keeps hard.

We had it in the Depression's never enough, but that cannot be passed on.

The bitter Irish cared their poverty into poetry. Jews know it to the bone.

Who wins an inward war, if the conqueror buries his battle and his dead,

But the warm, swarming, dissatisfied great-grandchildren Hamlet never had?