Poetry of Oliver Wendell Holmes | Page 5

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.
THE DILEMMA
Now, by the blessed Paphian queen,?Who heaves the breast of sweet sixteen;?By every name I cut on bark?Before my morning star grew dark;?By Hymen's torch, by Cupid's dart,?By all that thrills the beating heart;?The bright black eye, the melting blue,--?I cannot choose between the two.
I had a vision in my dreams;--?I saw a row of twenty beams;?From every beam a rope was hung,?In every rope a lover swung;?I asked the hue of every eye?That bade each luckless lover die;?Ten shadowy lips said, heavenly blue,?And ten accused the darker hue.
I asked a matron which she deemed?With fairest light of beauty beamed;?She answered, some thought both were fair,--?Give her blue eyes and golden hair.?I might have liked her judgment well,?But, as she spoke, she rung the bell,?And all her girls, nor small nor few,?Came marching in,--their eyes were blue.
I asked a maiden; back she flung?The locks that round her forehead hung,?And turned her eye, a glorious one,?Bright as a diamond in the sun,?On me, until beneath its rays?I felt as if my hair would blaze;?She liked all eyes but eyes of green;?She looked at me; what could she mean?
Ah! many lids Love lurks between,?Nor heeds the coloring of his screen;?And when his random arrows fly,?The victim falls, but knows not why.?Gaze not upon his shield of jet,?The shaft upon the string is set;?Look not beneath his azure veil,?Though every limb were cased in mail.
Well, both might make a martyr break?The chain that bound him to the stake;?And both, with but a single ray,?Can melt our very hearts away;?And both, when balanced, hardly seem?To stir the scales, or rock the beam;?But that is dearest, all the while,?That wears for us the sweetest smile.
MY AUNT
MY aunt! my dear unmarried aunt!?Long years have o'er her flown;?Yet still she strains the aching clasp?That binds her virgin zone;?I know it hurts her,--though she looks?As cheerful as she can;?Her waist is ampler than her life,?For life is but a span.
My aunt! my poor deluded aunt!?Her hair is almost gray;?Why will she train that winter curl?In such a spring-like way??How can she lay her glasses down,?And say she reads as well,?When through a double convex lens?She just makes out to spell?
Her father--grandpapa I forgive?This erring lip its smiles--?Vowed she should make the finest girl?Within a hundred miles;?He sent her to a stylish school;?'T was in her thirteenth June;?And with her, as the rules required,?"Two towels and a spoon."
They braced my aunt against a board,?To make her straight and tall;?They laced her up, they starved her down,?To make her light and small;?They pinched her feet, they singed her hair,?They screwed it up with pins;--?Oh never mortal suffered more?In penance for her sins.
So, when my precious aunt was done,?My grandsire brought her back;?(By daylight, lest some rabid youth?Might follow on the track;)?"Ah!" said my grandsire, as he shook?Some powder in his pan,?"What could this lovely creature do?Against a desperate man!"
Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche,?Nor bandit cavalcade,?Tore from the trembling father's arms?His all-accomplished maid.?For her how happy had it been?And Heaven had spared to me?To see one sad, ungathered rose?On my ancestral tree.
REFLECTIONS OF A PROUD PEDESTRIAN
I SAW the curl of his waving lash,?And the glance of his knowing eye,?And I knew that he thought he was cutting a dash,?As his steed went thundering by.
And he may ride in the rattling gig,?Or flourish the Stanhope gay,?And dream that he looks exceeding big?To the people that walk in the way;
But he shall think, when the night is still,?On the stable-boy's gathering numbers,?And the ghost of many a veteran bill?Shall hover around his slumbers;
The ghastly dun shall worry his sleep,?And constables cluster around him,?And he shall creep from the wood-hole deep?Where their spectre eyes have found him!
Ay! gather your reins, and crack your thong,?And bid your steed go faster;?He does not know, as he scrambles along,?That he has a fool for his master;
And hurry away on your lonely ride,?Nor deign from the mire to save me;?I will paddle it stoutly at your side?With the tandem that nature gave me!
DAILY TRIALS
BY A SENSITIVE MAN
OH, there are times?When all this fret and tumult that we hear?Do seem more stale than to the sexton's ear?His own dull chimes.
Ding dong! ding dong!?The world is in a simmer like a sea?Over a pent volcano,--woe is me?All the day long!
From crib to shroud!?Nurse o'er our cradles screameth lullaby,?And friends in