Speak not too well of one who scarce will know
Himself transfigured in its roseate glow;
Say kindly of him what is, chiefly, true,
Remembering always he belongs to you;
Deal with him as a truant, if you will,
But claim him, keep him, call him brother still!

"Poem", read at a dinner given for the author by the medical profession of the City of New York (April 12, 1883); reported in The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, ed. Eleanor M. Tilton (1895, rev. 1975), p. 71.