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THE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
THE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES THE POETICAL WORKS
OF
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
1893
(Printed in three volumes)
CONTENTS
TO MY READERS
EARLIER POEMS (1830-1836).
OLD IRONSIDES
THE LAST LEAF
THE CAMBRIDGE CHURCHYARD
TO AN INSECT
THE DILEMMA
MY AUNT
REFLECTIONS OF A PROUD PEDESTRIAN
DAILY TRIALS BY A SENSITIVE MAN
EVENING BY A TAILOR
THE DORCHESTER GIANT
TO THE PORTRAIT OF "A LADY"
THE COMET
THE Music-GRINDERS
THE TREADMILL SONG
THE SEPTEMBER GALE
THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS
THE LAST READER
POETRY : A METRICAL ESSAY
TO MY READERS
NAY blame me not; I might have spared
Your patience many a trivial verse
Yet these my earlier welcome shared
So let the better shield the worse.
And some might say "Those ruder songs
Had freshness which the new have lost;
To spring the opening leaf belongs
The chestnut-burs await the frost."
When those I wrote my locks were brown
When these I write--ah well a-day!
The autumn thistle's silvery down
Is not the purple bloom of May
Go little book whose pages hold
Those garnered years in loving trust;
How long before your blue and gold
Shall fade and whiten in the dust?
O sexton of the alcoved tomb
Where souls in leathern cerements lie
Tell me each living poet's doom!
How long before his book shall die?
It matters little soon or late
A day a month a year an age--
I read oblivion in its date
And Finis on its title-page.
Before we sighed our griefs were told;
Before we smiled our joys were sung;
And all our passions shaped of old
In accents lost to mortal tongue.
In vain a fresher mould we seek--
Can all the varied phrases tell
That Babel's wandering children speak
How thrushes sing or lilacs smell?
Caged in the poet's lonely heart
Love wastes unheard its tenderest tone;
The soul that sings must dwell apart
Its inward melodies unknown.
Deal gently with us ye who read
Our largest hope is unfulfilled--
The promise still outruns the deed--
The tower but not the spire we build.
Our whitest pearl we never find;
Our ripest fruit we never reach;
The flowering moments of the mind
Drop half their petals in our speech.
These are my blossoms; if they wear
One streak of morn or evening's glow
Accept them; but to me more fair
The buds of song that never blow.
April 8 1862.
EARLIER POEMS
1830-1836 OLD IRONSIDES
This was the popular name by which the frigate Constitution
was known. The poem was first printed in the Boston Daily
Advertiser at the time when it was proposed to break up the
old ship as unfit for service. I subjoin the paragraph which
led to the writing of the poem. It is from the Advertiser of
Tuesday September 14 1830:--
"Old Ironsides.--It has been affirmed upon good authority
that the Secretary of the Navy has recommended to the Board of
Navy Commissioners to dispose of the frigate Constitution. Since
it has been understood that such a step was in contemplation we
have heard but one opinion expressed and that in decided
disapprobation of the measure. Such a national object of interest
so endeared to our national pride as Old Ironsides is should
never by any act of our government cease to belong to the Navy
so long as our country is to be found upon the map of nations.
In England it was lately determined by the Admiralty to cut the
Victory a one-hundred gun ship (which it will be recollected bore
the flag of Lord Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar) down to a
seventy-four but so loud were the lamentations of the people upon
the proposed measure that the intention was abandoned. We
confidently anticipate that the Secretary of the Navy will in like
manner consult the general wish in regard to the Constitution and
either let her remain in ordinary or rebuild her whenever the
public service may require."--New York Journal of Commerce.
The poem was an impromptu outburst of feeling and was published
on the next day but one after reading the above paragraph.
AY tear her tattered ensign down
Long has it waved on high
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout
And burst the cannon's roar;--
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more.
Her deck once red with heroes' blood
Where knelt the vanquished foe
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood
And waves were white below
No more shall feel the victor's tread
Or know the conquered knee;--
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!
Oh better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag
Set every threadbare sail
And give her to the god of storms
The lightning and the gale!
THE LAST LEAF
This poem was suggested by the appearance in one of our
streets of a venerable relic of the Revolution said to be one
of the party who threw the tea overboard in Boston Harbor. He
was a fine monumental specimen in his cocked hat and knee
breeches with his buckled shoes and his sturdy cane. The smile
with which I as a young man greeted him meant no disrespect to
an honored fellow-citizen whose costume was out of date but whose
patriotism never changed with years. I do not recall any earlier
example of this form of verse which was commended by the fastidious
Edgar Allan Poe who made a copy of the whole poem which I have
in his own handwriting. Good Abraham Lincoln had a great liking
for the poem and repeated it from memory to Governor Andrew
as the governor himself told me.
I SAW him once before
As he passed by the door
And again
The pavement stones resound
As he totters o'er the ground
With his cane.
They say that in his prime
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.
But now he walks the streets
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan
And he shakes his feeble head
That it seems as if he said
"They are gone."
The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.
My grandmamma has said--
Poor old lady she is dead
Long ago--
That he had a Roman nose
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow.
But now his nose is thin
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff
And a crook is in his back
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.
I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat
And the breeches and all that
Are so queer!
And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring
Let them smile as I do now
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.
THE CAMBRIDGE CHURCHYARD
OUR ancient church! its lowly tower
Beneath the loftier spire
Is shadowed when the sunset hour
Clothes the tall shaft in fire;
It sinks beyond the distant eye
Long ere the glittering vane
High wheeling in the western sky
Has faded o'er the plain.
Like Sentinel and Nun they keep
Their vigil on the green;
One seems to guard and one to weep
The dead that lie between;
And both roll out so full and near
Their music's mingling waves
They shake the grass whose pennoned spear
Leans on the narrow graves.
The stranger parts the flaunting weeds
Whose seeds the winds have strown
So thick beneath the line he reads
They shade the sculptured stone;
The child unveils his clustered brow
And ponders for a while
The graven willow's pendent bough
Or rudest cherub's smile.
But what to them the dirge the knell?
These were the mourner's share--
The sullen clang whose heavy swell
Throbbed through the beating air;
The rattling cord the rolling stone
The shelving sand that slid
And far beneath with hollow tone
Rung on the coffin's lid.
The slumberer's mound grows fresh and green
Then slowly disappears;
The mosses creep the gray stones lean
Earth hides his date and years;
But long before the once-loved name
Is sunk or worn away
No lip the silent dust may claim
That pressed the breathing clay.
Go where the ancient pathway guides
See where our sires laid down
Their smiling babes their cherished brides
The patriarchs of the town;
Hast thou a tear for buried love?
A sigh for transient power?
All that a century left above
Go read it in an hour!
The Indian's shaft the Briton's ball
The sabre's thirsting edge
The hot shell shattering in its fall
The bayonet's rending wedge--
Here scattered death; yet seek the spot
No trace thine eye can see
No altar--and they need it not
Who leave their children free!
Look where the turbid rain-drops stand
In many a chiselled square;
The knightly crest the shield the brand
Of honored names were there;--
Alas! for every tear is dried
Those blazoned tablets knew
Save when the icy marble's side
Drips with the evening dew.
Or gaze upon yon pillared stone
The empty urn of pride;
There stand the Goblet and the Sun--
What need of more beside?
Where lives the memory of the dead
Who made their tomb a toy?
Whose ashes press that nameless bed?
Go ask the village boy!
Lean o'er the slender western wall
Ye ever-roaming girls;
The breath that bids the blossom fall
May lift your floating curls
To sweep the simple lines that tell
An exile's date and doom;
And sigh for where his daughters dwell
They wreathe the stranger's tomb.
And one amid these shades was born
Beneath this turf who lies
Once beaming as the summer's morn
That closed her gentle eyes;
If sinless angels love as we
Who stood thy grave beside
Three seraph welcomes waited thee
The daughter sister bride
I wandered to thy buried mound
When earth was hid below
The level of the glaring ground
Choked to its gates with snow
And when with summer's flowery waves
The lake of verdure rolled
As if a Sultan's white-robed slaves
Had scattered pearls and gold.
Nay the soft pinions of the air
That lift this trembling tone
Its breath of love may almost bear
To kiss thy funeral stone;
And now thy smiles have passed away
For all the joy they gave
May sweetest dews and warmest ray
Lie on thine early grave!
When damps beneath and storms above
Have bowed these fragile towers
Still o'er the graves yon locust grove
Shall swing its Orient flowers;
And I would ask no mouldering bust
If e'er this humble line
Which breathed a sigh o'er other's dust
Might call a tear on mine.
TO AN INSECT
The Katydid is "a species of grasshopper found in the United
States so called from the sound which it makes."--Worcester.
I used to hear this insect in Providence Rhode Island but I
do not remember hearing it in Cambridge Massachusetts where
I passed my boyhood. It is well known in other towns in the
neighborhood of Boston.
I LOVE to hear thine earnest voice
Wherever thou art hid
Thou testy little dogmatist
Thou pretty Katydid
Thou mindest me of gentlefolks--
Old gentlefolks are they--
Thou say'st an undisputed thing
In such a solemn way.
Thou art a female Katydid
I know it by the trill
That quivers through thy piercing notes
So petulant and shrill;
I think there is a knot of you
Beneath the hollow tree--
A knot of spinster Katydids---
Do Katydids drink tea?
Oh tell me where did Katy live
And what did Katy do?
And was she very fair and young
And yet so wicked too?
Did Katy love a naughty man
Or kiss more cheeks than one?
I warrant Katy did no more
Than many a Kate has done.
Dear me! I'll tell you all about
My fuss with little Jane
And Ann with whom I used to walk
So often down the lane
And all that tore their locks of black
Or wet their eyes of blue--
Pray tell me sweetest Katydid
What did poor Katy do?
Ah no! the living oak shall crash
That stood for ages still
The rock shall rend its mossy base
And thunder down the hill
Before the little Katydid
Shall add one word to tell
The mystic story of the maid
Whose name she knows so well.
Peace to the ever-murmuring race!
And when the latest one
Shall fold in death her feeble wings
Beneath the autumn sun
Then shall she raise her fainting voice
And lift her drooping lid
And then the child of future years
Shall hear what Katy did.
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