Borges—The Conjectural Poem

Eugène Delacroix, The Battle of Taillebourg (1834)
"Lawyers can be dishonest, venal and self-serving. Lawyers can be intoxicated by power and can do evil to achieve it. But lawyers can be heroes, though sometimes tragic ones, whose vision provides inspiration across the ages. Consider this amazing poem by Borges, a salute to his ancestor, Francisco Narciso de Laprida, a lawyer who struggled to bring democratic liberalism anchored in the rule of law to the southern cone of Latin America."
Harpers