The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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From the same cradle's side,
From the same mother's knee,--
One to long darkness and the frozen tide,
One to the Peaceful Sea!
THE PROMISE
NOT charity we ask,
Nor yet thy gift refuse;
Please thy light fancy with the easy task
Only to look and choose.
The little-heeded toy
That wins thy treasured gold
May be the dearest memory, holiest joy,
Of coming years untold.
Heaven rains on every heart,
But there its showers divide,
The drops of mercy choosing, as they part,
The dark or glowing side.
One kindly deed may turn
The fountain of thy soul
To love's sweet day-star, that shall o'er thee burn
Long as its currents roll.
The pleasures thou hast planned,--
Where shall their memory be
When the white angel with the freezing hand
Shall sit and watch by thee?
Living, thou dost not live,
If mercy's spring run dry;
What Heaven has lent thee wilt thou freely give,
Dying, thou shalt not die.
HE promised even so!
To thee his lips repeat,--
Behold, the tears that soothed thy sister's woe
Have washed thy Master's feet!
March 20, 1859.
AVIS
I MAY not rightly call thy name,--
Alas! thy forehead never knew
The kiss that happier children claim,
Nor glistened with baptismal dew.
Daughter of want and wrong and woe,
I saw thee with thy sister-band,
Snatched from the whirlpool's narrowing flow
By Mercy's strong yet trembling hand.
"Avis!"--With Saxon eye and cheek,
At once a woman and a child,
The saint uncrowned I came to seek
Drew near to greet us,--spoke, and smiled.
God gave that sweet sad smile she wore
All wrong to shame, all souls to win,--
A heavenly sunbeam sent before
Her footsteps through a world of sin.
"And who is Avis?"--Hear the tale
The calm-voiced matrons gravely tell,--
The story known through all the vale
Where Avis and her sisters dwell.
With the lost children running wild,
Strayed from the hand of human care,
They find one little refuse child
Left helpless in its poisoned lair.
The primal mark is on her face,--
The chattel-stamp,--the pariah-stain
That follows still her hunted race,--
The curse without the crime of Cain.
How shall our smooth-turned phrase relate
The little suffering outcast's ail?
Not Lazarus at the rich man's gate
So turned the rose-wreathed revellers pale.
Ah, veil the living death from sight
That wounds our beauty-loving eye!
The children turn in selfish fright,
The white-lipped nurses hurry by.
Take her, dread Angel! Break in love
This bruised reed and make it thine!--
No voice descended from above,
But Avis answered, "She is mine."
The task that dainty menials spurn
The fair young girl has made her own;
Her heart shall teach, her hand shall learn
The toils, the duties yet unknown.
So Love and Death in lingering strife
Stand face to face from day to day,
Still battling for the spoil of Life
While the slow seasons creep away.
Love conquers Death; the prize is won;
See to her joyous bosom pressed
The dusky daughter of the sun,--
The bronze against the marble breast!
Her task is done; no voice divine
Has crowned her deeds with saintly fame.
No eye can see the aureole shine
That rings her brow with heavenly flame.
Yet what has holy page more sweet,
Or what had woman's love more fair,
When Mary clasped her Saviour's feet
With flowing eyes and streaming hair?
Meek child of sorrow, walk unknown,
The Angel of that earthly throng,
And let thine image live alone
To hallow this unstudied song!
THE LIVING TEMPLE
NOT in the world of light alone,
Where God has built his blazing throne,
Nor yet alone in earth below,
With belted seas that come and go,
And endless isles of sunlit green,
Is all thy Maker's glory seen:
Look in upon thy wondrous frame,--
Eternal wisdom still the same!
The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves
Flows murmuring through its hidden caves,
Whose streams of brightening purple rush,
Fired with a new and livelier blush,
While all their burden of decay
The ebbing current steals away,
And red with Nature's flame they start
From the warm fountains of the heart.
No rest that throbbing slave may ask,
Forever quivering o'er his task,
While far and wide a crimson jet
Leaps forth to fill the woven net
Which in unnumbered crossing tides
The flood of burning life divides,
Then, kindling each decaying part,
Creeps back to find the throbbing heart.
But warmed with that unchanging flame
Behold the outward moving frame,
Its living marbles jointed strong
With glistening band and silvery thong,
And linked to reason's guiding reins
By myriad rings in trembling chains,
Each graven with the threaded zone
Which claims it as the master's own.
See how yon beam of seeming white
Is braided out of seven-hued light,
Yet in those lucid globes no ray
By any chance shall break astray.
Hark how the rolling surge of sound,
Arches and spirals circling round,
Wakes the hushed spirit through thine ear
With music it is heaven to hear.
Then mark the cloven sphere that holds
All thought in its mysterious folds;
That feels sensation's faintest thrill,
And flashes forth the sovereign will;
Think on the stormy world that dwells
Locked in its dim and clustering cells!
The lightning gleams of power it sheds
Along its hollow glassy threads!
O Father! grant thy love divine
To make these mystic temples thine!
When wasting age and wearying strife
Have sapped the leaning walls of life,
When darkness gathers over all,
And the last tottering pillars fall,
Take the poor dust thy mercy warms,
And mould it into heavenly forms!
AT A BIRTHDAY FESTIVAL
TO J. R. LOWELL
WE will not speak of years to-night,--
For what have years to bring
But larger floods of love and light,
And sweeter songs to sing?
We will not drown in wordy praise
The kindly thoughts that rise;
If Friendship own one tender phrase,
He reads it in our eyes.
We need not waste our school-boy art
To gild this notch of Time;--
Forgive me if my wayward heart
Has throbbed in artless rhyme.
Enough for him the silent grasp
That knits us hand in hand,
And he the bracelet's radiant clasp
That locks our circling band.
Strength to his hours of manly toil!
Peace to his starlit dreams!
Who loves alike the furrowed soil,
The music-haunted streams!
Sweet smiles to keep forever bright
The sunshine on his lips,
And faith that sees the ring of light
Round nature's last eclipse!
February 22, 1859.
A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE
TO J. F. CLARKE
WHO is the shepherd sent to lead,
Through pastures green, the Master's sheep?
What guileless "Israelite indeed"
The folded flock may watch and keep?
He who with manliest spirit joins
The heart of gentlest human mould,
With burning light and girded loins,
To guide the flock, or watch the fold;
True to all Truth the world denies,
Not tongue-tied for its gilded sin;
Not always right in all men's eyes,
But faithful to the light within;
Who asks no meed of earthly fame,
Who knows no earthly master's call,
Who hopes for man, through guilt and shame,
Still answering, "God is over all";
Who makes another's grief his own,
Whose smile lends joy a double cheer;
Where lives the saint, if such be known?--
Speak softly,--such an one is here!
O faithful shepherd! thou hast borne
The heat and burden of the clay;
Yet, o'er thee, bright with beams unshorn,
The sun still shows thine onward way.
To thee our fragrant love we bring,
In buds that April half displays,
Sweet first-born angels of the spring,
Caught in their opening hymn of praise.
What though our faltering accents fail,
Our captives know their message well,
Our words unbreathed their lips exhale,
And sigh more love than ours can tell.
April 4, 1860.
THE GRAY CHIEF
FOR THE MEETING OF THE MASSACHUSETTS
MEDICAL SOCIETY, 1859
'T is sweet to fight our battles o'er,
And crown with honest praise
The gray old chief, who strikes no more
The blow of better days.
Before the true and trusted sage
With willing hearts we bend,
When years have touched with hallowing age
Our Master, Guide, and Friend.
For all his manhood's labor past,
For love and faith long tried,
His age is honored to the last,
Though strength and will have died.
But when, untamed by toil and strife,
Full in our front he stands,
The torch of light, the shield of life,
Still lifted in his hands,
No temple, though its walls resound
With bursts of ringing cheers,
Can hold the honors that surround
His manhood's twice-told years!
THE LAST LOOK
W. W. SWAIN
BEHOLD--not him we knew!
This was the prison which his soul looked through,
Tender, and brave, and true.
His voice no more is heard;
And his dead name--that dear familiar word--
Lies on our lips unstirred.
He spake with poet's tongue;
Living, for him the minstrel's lyre was strung:
He shall not die unsung.
Grief tried his love, and pain;
And the long bondage of his martyr-chain
Vexed his sweet soul,--in vain!
It felt life's surges break,
As, girt with stormy seas, his island lake,
Smiling while tempests wake.
How can we sorrow more?
Grieve not for him whose heart had gone before
To that untrodden shore!
Lo, through its leafy screen,
A gleam of sunlight on a ring of green,
Untrodden, half unseen!
Here let his body rest,
Where the calm shadows that his soul loved best
May slide above his breast.
Smooth his uncurtained bed;
And if some natural tears are softly shed,
It is not for the dead.
Fold the green turf aright
For the long hours before the morning's light,
And say the last Good Night!
And plant a clear white stone
Close by those mounds which hold his loved, his own,--
Lonely, but not alone.
Here let him sleeping lie,
Till Heaven's bright watchers slumber in the sky
And Death himself shall die!
Naushon, September 22, 1858.
IN MEMORY OF CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM, JR.
HE was all sunshine; in his face
The very soul of sweetness shone;
Fairest and gentlest of his race;
None like him we can call our own.
Something there was of one that died
In her fresh spring-time long ago,
Our first dear Mary, angel-eyed,
Whose smile it was a bliss to know.
Something of her whose love imparts
Such radiance to her day's decline,
We feel its twilight in our hearts
Bright as the earliest morning-shine.
Yet richer strains our eye could trace
That made our plainer mould more fair,
That curved the lip with happier grace,
That waved the soft and silken hair.
Dust unto dust! the lips are still
That only spoke to cheer and bless;
The folded hands lie white and chill
Unclasped from sorrow's last caress.
Leave him in peace; he will not heed
These idle tears we vainly pour,
Give back to earth the fading weed
Of mortal shape his spirit wore.
"Shall I not weep my heartstrings torn,
My flower of love that falls half blown,
My youth uncrowned, my life forlorn,
A thorny path to walk alone?"
O Mary! one who bore thy name,
Whose Friend and Master was divine,
Sat waiting silent till He came,
Bowed down in speechless grief like thine.
"Where have ye laid him?" "Come," they say,
Pointing to where the loved one slept;
Weeping, the sister led the way,--
And, seeing Mary, "Jesus wept."
He weeps with thee, with all that mourn,
And He shall wipe thy streaming eyes
Who knew all sorrows, woman-born,--
Trust in his word; thy dead shall rise!
April 15, 1860.
MARTHA
DIED JANUARY 7, 1861
SEXTON! Martha's dead and gone;
Toll the bell! toll the bell!
Her weary hands their labor cease;
Good night, poor Martha,--sleep in peace!
Toll the bell!
Sexton! Martha's dead and gone;
Toll the bell! toll the bell!
For many a year has Martha said,
"I'm old and poor,--would I were dead!"
Toll the bell!
Sexton! Martha's dead and gone;
Toll the bell! toll the bell!
She'll bring no more, by day or night,
Her basket full of linen white.
Toll the bell!
Sexton! Martha's dead and gone;
Toll the bell! toll the bell!
'T is fitting she should lie below
A pure white sheet of drifted snow.
Toll the bell!
Sexton! Martha's dead and gone;
Toll the bell! toll the bell!
Sleep, Martha, sleep, to wake in light,
Where all the robes are stainless white.
Toll the bell!
MEETING OF THE ALUMNI OF HARVARD COLLEGE
1857
I THANK you, MR. PRESIDENT, you've kindly broke the ice;
Virtue should always be the first,--I 'm only SECOND VICE--
(A vice is something with a screw that's made to hold its jaw
Till some old file has played away upon an ancient saw).
Sweet brothers by the Mother's side, the babes of days gone by,
All nurslings of her Juno breasts whose milk is never dry,
We come again, like half-grown boys, and gather at her beck
About her knees, and on her lap, and clinging round her neck.
We find her at her stately door, and in her ancient chair,
Dressed in the robes of red and green she always loved to wear.
Her eye has all its radiant youth, her cheek its morning flame;
We drop our roses as we go, hers flourish still the same.
We have been playing many an hour, and far away we've strayed,
Some laughing in the cheerful sun, some lingering in the shade;
And some have tired, and laid them down where darker shadows fall,
Dear as her loving voice may be, they cannot hear its call.
What miles we 've travelled since we shook the dew-drops from our shoes
We gathered on this classic green, so famed for heavy dues!
How many boys have joined the game, how many slipped away,
Since we've been running up and down, and having out our play!
One boy at work with book and brief, and one with gown and band,
One sailing vessels on the pool, one digging sand,
One flying paper kites on change, one planting little pills,--
The seeds of certain annual flowers well known as little bills.
What maidens met us on our way, and clasped us hand in hand!
What cherubs,--not the legless kind, that fly, but never stand!
How many a youthful head we've seen put on its silver crown
What sudden changes back again to youth's empurpled brown!
But fairer sights have met our eyes, and broader lights have shone,
Since others lit their midnight lamps where once we trimmed our own;
A thousand trains that flap the sky with flags of rushing fire,
And, throbbing in the Thunderer's hand, Thought's million-chorded lyre.
We've seen the sparks of Empire fly beyond the mountain bars,
Till, glittering o'er the Western wave, they joined the setting stars;
And ocean trodden into paths that trampling giants ford,
To find the planet's vertebrae and sink its spinal cord.
We've tried reform,--and chloroform,--and both have turned our brain;
When France called up the photograph, we roused the foe to pain;
Just so those earlier sages shared the chaplet of renown,--
Hers sent a bladder to the clouds, ours brought their lightning down.
We've seen the little tricks of life, its varnish and veneer,
Its stucco-fronts of character flake off and disappear,
We 've learned that oft the brownest hands will heap the biggest pile,
And met with many a "perfect brick" beneath a rimless "tile."
What dreams we 've had of deathless name, as scholars, statesmen, bards,
While Fame, the lady with the trump, held up her picture cards!
Till, having nearly played our game, she gayly whispered, "Ah!
I said you should be something grand,--you'll soon be grandpapa."
Well, well, the old have had their day, the young must take their turn;
There's something always to forget, and something still to learn;
But how to tell what's old or young, the tap-root from the sprigs,
Since Florida revealed her fount to Ponce de Leon Twiggs?
The wisest was a Freshman once, just freed from bar and bolt,
As noisy as a kettle-drum, as leggy as a colt;
Don't be too savage with the boys,--the Primer does not say
The kitten ought to go to church because the cat doth prey.
The law of merit and of age is not the rule of three;
Non constat that A. M. must prove as busy as A. B.
When Wise the father tracked the son, ballooning through the skies,
He taught a lesson to the old,--go thou and do like Wise!
Now then, old boys, and reverend youth, of high or low degree,
Remember how we only get one annual out of three,
And such as dare to simmer down three dinners into one
Must cut their salads mighty short, and pepper well with fun.
I've passed my zenith long ago, it's time for me to set;
A dozen planets wait to shine, and I am lingering yet,
As sometimes in the blaze of day a milk-and-watery moon
Stains with its dim and fading ray the lustrous blue of noon.
Farewell! yet let one echo rise to shake our ancient hall;
God save the Queen,--whose throne is here,--the Mother of us all
Till dawns the great commencement-day on every shore and sea,
And "Expectantur" all mankind, to take their last Degree!
THE PARTING SONG
FESTIVAL OF THE ALUMNI, 1857
THE noon of summer sheds its ray
On Harvard's holy ground;
The Matron calls, the sons obey,
And gather smiling round.
CHORUS.
Then old and young together stand,
The sunshine and the snow,
As heart to heart, and hand in hand,
We sing before we go!
Her hundred opening doors have swung
Through every storied hall
The pealing echoes loud have rung,
"Thrice welcome one and all!"
Then old and young, etc.
We floated through her peaceful bay,
To sail life's stormy seas
But left our anchor where it lay
Beneath her green old trees.
Then old and young, etc.
As now we lift its lengthening chain,
That held us fast of old,
The rusted rings grow bright again,--
Their iron turns to gold.
Then old and young, etc.
Though scattered ere the setting sun,
As leaves when wild winds blow,
Our home is here, our hearts are one,
Till Charles forgets to flow.
Then old and young, etc.
FOR THE MEETING OF THE NATIONAL
SANITARY ASSOCIATION
1860
WHAT makes the Healing Art divine?
The bitter drug we buy and sell,
The brands that scorch, the blades that shine,
The scars we leave, the "cures" we tell?
Are these thy glories, holiest Art,--
The trophies that adorn thee best,--
Or but thy triumph's meanest part,--
Where mortal weakness stands confessed?
We take the arms that Heaven supplies
For Life's long battle with Disease,
Taught by our various need to prize
Our frailest weapons, even these.
But ah! when Science drops her shield--
Its peaceful shelter proved in vain--
And bares her snow-white arm to wield
The sad, stern ministry of pain;
When shuddering o'er the fount of life,
She folds her heaven-anointed wings,
To lift unmoved the glittering knife
That searches all its crimson springs;
When, faithful to her ancient lore,
She thrusts aside her fragrant balm
For blistering juice, or cankering ore,
And tames them till they cure or calm;
When in her gracious hand are seen
The dregs and scum of earth and seas,
Her kindness counting all things clean
That lend the sighing sufferer ease;
Though on the field that Death has won,
She save some stragglers in retreat;--
These single acts of mercy done
Are but confessions of defeat.
What though our tempered poisons save
Some wrecks of life from aches and ails;
Those grand specifics Nature gave
Were never poised by weights or scales!
God lent his creatures light and air,
And waters open to the skies;
Man locks him in a stifling lair,
And wonders why his brother dies!
In vain our pitying tears are shed,
In vain we rear the sheltering pile
Where Art weeds out from bed to bed
The plagues we planted by the mile!
Be that the glory of the past;
With these our sacred toils begin
So flies in tatters from its mast
The yellow flag of sloth and sin,
And lo! the starry folds reveal
The blazoned truth we hold so dear
To guard is better than to heal,--
The shield is nobler than the spear!
FOR THE BURNS CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION
JANUARY 25, 1859
His birthday.--Nay, we need not speak
The name each heart is beating,--
Each glistening eye and flushing cheek
In light and flame repeating!
We come in one tumultuous tide,--
One surge of wild emotion,--
As crowding through the Frith of Clyde
Rolls in the Western Ocean;
As when yon cloudless, quartered moon
Hangs o'er each storied river,
The swelling breasts of Ayr and Doon
With sea green wavelets quiver.
The century shrivels like a scroll,--
The past becomes the present,--
And face to face, and soul to soul,
We greet the monarch-peasant.
While Shenstone strained in feeble flights
With Corydon and Phillis,--
While Wolfe was climbing Abraham's heights
To snatch the Bourbon lilies,--
Who heard the wailing infant's cry,
The babe beneath the sheeliug,
Whose song to-night in every sky
Will shake earth's starry ceiling,--
Whose passion-breathing voice ascends
And floats like incense o'er us,
Whose ringing lay of friendship blends
With labor's anvil chorus?
We love him, not for sweetest song,
Though never tone so tender;
We love him, even in his wrong,--
His wasteful self-surrender.
We praise him, not for gifts divine,--
His Muse was born of woman,--
His manhood breathes in every line,--
Was ever heart more human?
We love him, praise him, just for this
In every form and feature,
Through wealth and want, through woe and bliss,
He saw his fellow-creature!
No soul could sink beneath his love,--
Not even angel blasted;
No mortal power could soar above
The pride that all outlasted!
Ay! Heaven had set one living man
Beyond the pedant's tether,--
His virtues, frailties, HE may scan,
Who weighs them all together!
I fling my pebble on the cairn
Of him, though dead, undying;
Sweet Nature's nursling, bonniest bairn
Beneath her daisies lying.
The waning suns, the wasting globe,
Shall spare the minstrel's story,--
The centuries weave his purple robe,
The mountain-mist of glory!
AT A MEETING OF FRIENDS
AUGUST 29, 1859
I REMEMBER--why, yes! God bless me! and was it so long ago?
I fear I'm growing forgetful, as old folks do, you know;
It must have been in 'forty--I would say 'thirty-nine--
We talked this matter over, I and a friend of mine.
He said, "Well now, old fellow, I'm thinking that you and I,
If we act like other people, shall be older by and by;
What though the bright blue ocean is smooth as a pond can be,
There is always a line of breakers to fringe the broadest sea.
"We're taking it mighty easy, but that is nothing strange,
For up to the age of thirty we spend our years like Change;
But creeping up towards the forties, as fast as the old years fill,
And Time steps in for payment, we seem to change a bill."
"I know it," I said, "old fellow; you speak the solemn truth;
A man can't live to a hundred and likewise keep his youth;
But what if the ten years coming shall silver-streak my hair,
You know I shall then be forty; of course I shall not care.
"At forty a man grows heavy and tired of fun and noise;
Leaves dress to the five-and-twenties and love to the silly boys;
No foppish tricks at forty, no pinching of waists and toes,
But high-low shoes and flannels and good thick worsted hose."
But one fine August morning I found myself awake
My birthday:--By Jove, I'm forty! Yes, forty, and no mistake!
Why, this is the very milestone, I think I used to hold,
That when a fellow had come to, a fellow would then be old!
But that is the young folks' nonsense; they're full of their
foolish stuff;
A man's in his prime at forty,--I see that plain enough;
At fifty a man is wrinkled, and may be bald or gray;
I call men old at fifty, in spite of all they say.
At last comes another August with mist and rain and shine;
Its mornings are slowly counted and creep to twenty-nine,
And when on the western summits the fading light appears,
It touches with rosy fingers the last of my fifty years.
There have been both men and women whose hearts were firm and bold,
But there never was one of fifty that loved to say "I'm old";
So any elderly person that strives to shirk his years,
Make him stand up at a table and try him by his peers.
Now here I stand at fifty, my jury gathered round;
Sprinkled with dust of silver, but not yet silver-crowned,
Ready to meet your verdict, waiting to hear it told;
Guilty of fifty summers; speak! Is the verdict _old_.
No! say that his hearing fails him; say that his sight grows dim;
Say that he's getting wrinkled and weak in back and limb,
Losing his wits and temper, but pleading, to make amends,
The youth of his fifty summers he finds in his twenty friends.
FOR THE FAIR IN AID OF THE FUND TO PROCURE
BALL'S STATUE OF WASHINGTON
1630
ALL overgrown with bush and fern,
And straggling clumps of tangled trees,
With trunks that lean and boughs that turn,
Bent eastward by the mastering breeze,--
With spongy bogs that drip and fill
A yellow pond with muddy rain,
Beneath the shaggy southern hill
Lies wet and low the Shawinut plain.
And hark! the trodden branches crack;
A crow flaps off with startled scream;
A straying woodchuck canters back;
A bittern rises from the stream;
Leaps from his lair a frightened deer;
An otter plunges in the pool;--
Here comes old Shawmut's pioneer,
The parson on his brindled bull!
1774
The streets are thronged with trampling feet,
The northern hill is ridged with graves,
But night and morn the drum is beat
To frighten down the "rebel knaves."
The stones of King Street still are red,
And yet the bloody red-coats come
I hear their pacing sentry's tread,
The click of steel, the tap of drum,
And over all the open green,
Where grazed of late the harmless kine,
The cannon's deepening ruts are seen,
The war-horse stamps, the bayonets shine.
The clouds are dark with crimson rain
Above the murderous hirelings' den,
And soon their whistling showers shall stain
The pipe-clayed belts of Gage's men.