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THE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES - VOLUME 12.
THE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES - VOLUME 12. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES THE POETICAL WORKS
OF
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
1893
(Printed in three volumes)
CONTENTS:
VERSES FROM THE OLDEST PORTFOLIO
FIRST VERSES: TRANSLATION FROM THE THE MEETING OF THE DRYADS
THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR
THE TOADSTOOL
THE SPECTRE PIG
TO A CAGED LION
THE STAR AND THE WATER-LILY
ILLUSTRATION OF A PICTURE: "A SPANISH GIRL REVERIE"
A ROMAN AQUEDUCT
FROM A BACHELOR'S PRIVATE JOURNAL
LA GRISETTE
OUR YANKEE GIRLS
L'INCONNUE
STANZAS
LINES BY A CLERK
THE PHILOSOPHER TO HIS LOVE
THE POET'S LOT
TO A BLANK SHEET OF PAPER
TO THE PORTRAIT OF "A GENTLEMAN" IN THE ATHENAEUM GALLERY
THE BALLAD OF THE OYSTERMAN
A NOONTIDE LYRIC
THE HOT SEASON
A PORTRAIT
AN EVENING THOUGHT. WRITTEN AT SEA
THE WASP AND THE HORNET
"QUI VIVE?"
VERSES FROM THE OLDEST PORTFOLIO
FROM THE "COLLEGIAN" 1830 ILLUSTRATED ANNUALS ETC.
Nescit vox missa reverti.--Horat. Ars Poetica.
Ab lis qua non adjuvant quam mollissime oportet pedem referre.--
Quintillian L. VI. C. 4.
These verses have always been printed in my collected poems and as the
best of them may bear a single reading I allow them to appear but in a
less conspicuous position than the other productions. A chick before
his shell is off his back is hardly a fair subject for severe criticism.
If one has written anything worth preserving his first efforts may be
objects of interest and curiosity. Other young authors may take
encouragement from seeing how tame how feeble how commonplace were the
rudimentary attempts of the half-fledged poet. If the boy or youth had
anything in him there will probably be some sign of it in the midst of
his imitative mediocrities and ambitious failures. These "first verses"
of mine written before I was sixteen have little beyond a common
academy boy's ordinary performance. Yet a kindly critic said there was
one line which showed a poetical quality:--
"The boiling ocean trembled into calm."
One of these poems--the reader may guess which--won fair words from
Thackeray. The Spectre Pig was a wicked suggestion which came into my
head after reading Dana's Buccaneer. Nobody seemed to find it out and
I never mentioned it to the venerable poet who might not have been
pleased with the parody. This is enough to say of these unvalued copies
of verses.
FIRST VERSES
PHILLIPS ACADEMY ANDOVER MASS. 1824 OR 1825
TRANSLATION FROM THE ENEID BOOK I.
THE god looked out upon the troubled deep
Waked into tumult from its placid sleep;
The flame of anger kindles in his eye
As the wild waves ascend the lowering sky;
He lifts his head above their awful height
And to the distant fleet directs his sight
Now borne aloft upon the billow's crest
Struck by the bolt or by the winds oppressed
And well he knew that Juno's vengeful ire
Frowned from those clouds and sparkled in that fire.
On rapid pinions as they whistled by
He calls swift Zephyrus and Eurus nigh
Is this your glory in a noble line
To leave your confines and to ravage mine?
Whom I--but let these troubled waves subside--
Another tempest and I'11 quell your pride!
Go--bear our message to your master's ear
That wide as ocean I am despot here;
Let him sit monarch in his barren caves
I wield the trident and control the waves
He said and as the gathered vapors break
The swelling ocean seemed a peaceful lake;
To lift their ships the graceful nymphs essayed
And the strong trident lent its powerful aid;
The dangerous banks are sunk beneath the main
And the light chariot skims the unruffled plain.
As when sedition fires the public mind
And maddening fury leads the rabble blind
The blazing torch lights up the dread alarm
Rage points the steel and fury nerves the arm
Then if some reverend Sage appear in sight
They stand--they gaze and check their headlong flight--
He turns the current of each wandering breast
And hushes every passion into rest--
Thus by the power of his imperial arm
The boiling ocean trembled into calm;
With flowing reins the father sped his way
And smiled serene upon rekindled day.
THE MEETING OF THE DRYADS
Written after a general pruning of the trees around Harvard College.
A little poem on a similar occasion may be found in the works of Swift
from which perhaps the idea was borrowed; although I was as much
surprised as amused to meet with it some time after writing the following
lines.
IT was not many centuries since
When gathered on the moonlit green
Beneath the Tree of Liberty
A ring of weeping sprites was seen.
The freshman's lamp had long been dim
The voice of busy day was mute
And tortured Melody had ceased
Her sufferings on the evening flute.
They met not as they once had met
To laugh o'er many a jocund tale
But every pulse was beating low
And every cheek was cold and pale.
There rose a fair but faded one
Who oft had cheered them with her song;
She waved a mutilated arm
And silence held the listening throng.
"Sweet friends" the gentle nymph began
"From opening bud to withering leaf
One common lot has bound us all
In every change of joy and grief.
"While all around has felt decay
We rose in ever-living prime
With broader shade and fresher green
Beneath the crumbling step of Time.
"When often by our feet has past
Some biped Nature's walking whim
Say have we trimmed one awkward shape
Or lopped away one crooked limb?
"Go on fair Science; soon to thee
Shall. Nature yield her idle boast;
Her vulgar fingers formed a tree
But thou halt trained it to a post.
"Go paint the birch's silver rind
And quilt the peach with softer down;
Up with the willow's trailing threads
Off with the sunflower's radiant crown!
"Go plant the lily on the shore
And set the rose among the waves
And bid the tropic bud unbind
Its silken zone in arctic caves;
"Bring bellows for the panting winds
Hang up a lantern by the moon
And give the nightingale a fife
And lend the eagle a balloon!
"I cannot smile--the tide of scorn
That rolled through every bleeding vein
Comes kindling fiercer as it flows
Back to its burning source again.
"Again in every quivering leaf
That moment's agony I feel
When limbs that spurned the northern blast
Shrunk from the sacrilegious steel.
"A curse upon the wretch who dared
To crop us with his felon saw!
May every fruit his lip shall taste
Lie like a bullet in his maw.
"In every julep that he drinks
May gout and bile and headache be;
And when he strives to calm his pain
May colic mingle with his tea.
"May nightshade cluster round his path
And thistles shoot and brambles cling;
May blistering ivy scorch his veins
And dogwood burn and nettles sting.
"On him may never shadow fall
When fever racks his throbbing brow
And his last shilling buy a rope
To hang him on my highest bough!"
She spoke;--the morning's herald beam
Sprang from the bosom of the sea
And every mangled sprite returned
In sadness to her wounded tree.
THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR
THERE was a sound of hurrying feet
A tramp on echoing stairs
There was a rush along the aisles--
It was the hour of prayers.
And on like Ocean's midnight wave
The current rolled along
When suddenly a stranger form
Was seen amidst the throng.
He was a dark and swarthy man
That uninvited guest;
A faded coat of bottle-green
Was buttoned round his breast.
There was not one among them all
Could say from whence he came;
Nor beardless boy nor ancient man
Could tell that stranger's name.
All silent as the sheeted dead
In spite of sneer and frown
Fast by a gray-haired senior's side
He sat him boldly down.
There was a look of horror flashed
From out the tutor's eyes;
When all around him rose to pray
The stranger did not rise!
A murmur broke along the crowd
The prayer was at an end;
With ringing heels and measured tread
A hundred forms descend.
Through sounding aisle o'er grating stair
The long procession poured
Till all were gathered on the seats
Around the Commons board.
That fearful stranger! down he sat
Unasked yet undismayed;
And on his lip a rising smile
Of scorn or pleasure played.
He took his hat and hung it up
With slow but earnest air;
He stripped his coat from off his back
And placed it on a chair.
Then from his nearest neighbor's side
A knife and plate he drew;
And reaching out his hand again
He took his teacup too.
How fled the sugar from the bowl
How sunk the azure cream!
They vanished like the shapes that float
Upon a summer's dream.
A long long draught--an outstretched hand--
And crackers toast and tea
They faded from the stranger's touch
Like dew upon the sea.
Then clouds were dark on many a brow
Fear sat upon their souls
And in a bitter agony
They clasped their buttered rolls.
A whisper trembled through the crowd
Who could the stranger be?
And some were silent for they thought
A cannibal was he.
What if the creature should arise--
For he was stout and tall--
And swallow down a sophomore
Coat crow's-foot cap and all!
All sullenly the stranger rose;
They sat in mute despair;
He took his hat from off the peg
His coat from off the chair.
Four freshmen fainted on the seat
Six swooned upon the floor;
Yet on the fearful being passed
And shut the chapel door.
There is full many a starving man
That walks in bottle green
But never more that hungry one
In Commons hall was seen.
Yet often at the sunset hour
When tolls the evening bell
The freshman lingers on the steps
That frightful tale to tell.
THE TOADSTOOL
THERE 's a thing that grows by the fainting flower
And springs in the shade of the lady's bower;
The lily shrinks and the rose turns pale
When they feel its breath in the summer gale
And the tulip curls its leaves in pride
And the blue-eyed violet starts aside;
But the lily may flaunt and the tulip stare
For what does the honest toadstool care?
She does not glow in a painted vest
And she never blooms on the maiden's breast;
But she comes as the saintly sisters do
In a modest suit of a Quaker hue.
And when the stars in the evening skies
Are weeping dew from their gentle eyes
The toad comes out from his hermit cell
The tale of his faithful love to tell.
Oh there is light in her lover's glance
That flies to her heart like a silver lance;
His breeches are made of spotted skin
His jacket 'is tight and his pumps are thin;
In a cloudless night you may hear his song
As its pensive melody floats along
And if you will look by the moonlight fair
The trembling form of the toad is there.
And he twines his arms round her slender stem
In the shade of her velvet diadem;
But she turns away in her maiden shame
And will not breathe on the kindling flame;
He sings at her feet through the live-long night
And creeps to his cave at the break of light;
And whenever he comes to the air above
His throat is swelling with baffled love.
THE SPECTRE PIG
A BALLAD
IT was the stalwart butcher man
That knit his swarthy brow
And said the gentle Pig must die
And sealed it with a vow.
And oh! it was the gentle Pig
Lay stretched upon the ground
And ah! it was the cruel knife
His little heart that found.
They took him then those wicked men
They trailed him all along;
They put a stick between his lips
And through his heels a thong;
And round and round an oaken beam
A hempen cord they flung
And like a mighty pendulum
All solemnly he swung!
Now say thy prayers thou sinful man
And think what thou hast done
And read thy catechism well
Thou bloody-minded one;
For if his sprite should walk by night
It better were for thee
That thou wert mouldering in the ground
Or bleaching in the sea.
It was the savage butcher then
That made a mock of sin
And swore a very wicked oath
He did not care a pin.
It was the butcher's youngest son--
His voice was broke with sighs
And with his pocket-handkerchief
He wiped his little eyes;
All young and ignornt was he
But innocent and mild
And in his soft simplicity
Out spoke the tender child :--
"Oh father father list to me;
The Pig is deadly sick
And men have hung him by his heels
And fed him with a stick."
It was the bloody butcher then
That laughed as he would die
Yet did he soothe the sorrowing child
And bid him not to cry;--
"Oh Nathan Nathan what's a Pig
That thou shouldst weep and wail?
Come bear thee like a butcher's child
And thou shalt have his tail!"
It was the butcher's daughter then
So slender and so fair
That sobbed as it her heart would break
And tore her yellow hair;
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