Poetry of Oliver Wendell Holmes | Page 6

boots tramp round us as we die,?Snuffling aloud.
At morning's call?The small-voiced pug-dog welcomes in the sun,?And flea-bit mongrels, wakening one by one,?Give answer all.
When evening dim?Draws round us, then the lonely caterwaul,?Tart solo, sour duet, and general squall,--?These are our hymn.
Women, with tongues?Like polar needles, ever on the jar;?Men, plugless word-spouts, whose deep fountains are?Within their lungs.
Children, with drums?Strapped round them by the fond paternal ass;?Peripatetics with a blade of grass?Between their thumbs.
Vagrants, whose arts?Have caged some devil in their mad machine,?Which grinding, squeaks, with husky groans between,?Come out by starts.
Cockneys that kill?Thin horses of a Sunday,--men, with clams,?Hoarse as young bisons roaring for their dams?From hill to hill.
Soldiers, with guns,?Making a nuisance of the blessed air,?Child-crying bellmen, children in despair,?Screeching for buns.
Storms, thunders, waves!?Howl, crash, and bellow till ye get your fill;?Ye sometimes rest; men never can be still?But in their graves.
EVENING
BY A TAILOR
DAY hath put on his jacket, and around?His burning bosom buttoned it with stars.?Here will I lay me on the velvet grass,?That is like padding to earth's meagre ribs,?And hold communion with the things about me.?Ah me! how lovely is the golden braid?That binds the skirt of night's descending robe!?The thin leaves, quivering on their silken threads,?Do make a music like to rustling satin,?As the light breezes smooth their downy nap.
Ha! what is this that rises to my touch,?So like a cushion? Can it be a cabbage??It is, it is that deeply injured flower,?Which boys do flout us with;--but yet I love thee,?Thou giant rose, wrapped in a green surtout.?Doubtless in Eden thou didst blush as bright?As these, thy puny brethren; and thy breath?Sweetened the fragrance of her spicy air;?But now thou seemest like a bankrupt beau,?Stripped of his gaudy hues and essences,?And growing portly in his sober garments.
Is that a swan that rides upon the water??Oh no, it is that other gentle bird,?Which is the patron of our noble calling.?I well remember, in my early years,?When these young hands first closed upon a goose;?I have a scar upon my thimble finger,?Which chronicles the hour of young ambition.?My father was a tailor, and his father,?And my sire's grandsire, all of them were tailors;?They had an ancient goose,--it was an heirloom?From some remoter tailor of our race.?It happened I did see it on a time?When none was near, and I did deal with it,?And it did burn me,--oh, most fearfully!
It is a joy to straighten out one's limbs,?And leap elastic from the level counter,?Leaving the petty grievances of earth,?The breaking thread, the din of clashing shears,?And all the needles that do wound the spirit,?For such a pensive hour of soothing silence.?Kind Nature, shuffling in her loose undress,?Lays bare her shady bosom;--I can feel?With all around me;--I can hail the flowers?That sprig earth's mantle,--and yon quiet bird,?That rides the stream, is to me as a brother.?The vulgar know not all the hidden pockets,?Where Nature stows away her loveliness.?But this unnatural posture of the legs?Cramps my extended calves, and I must go?Where I can coil them in their wonted fashion.
THE DORCHESTER GIANT
The "pudding-stone" is a remarkable conglomerate found very abundantly in the towns mentioned, all of which are in the neighborhood of Boston. We used in those primitive days to ask friends to ride with us when we meant to take them to drive with us.
THERE was a giant in time of old,?A mighty one was he;?He had a wife, but she was a scold,?So he kept her shut in his mammoth fold;?And he had children three.
It happened to be an election day,?And the giants were choosing a king?The people were not democrats then,?They did not talk of the rights of men,?And all that sort of thing.
Then the giant took his children three,?And fastened them in the pen;?The children roared; quoth the giant, "Be still!"?And Dorchester Heights and Milton Hill?Rolled back the sound again.
Then he brought them a pudding stuffed with plums,?As big as the State-House dome;?Quoth he, "There 's something for you to eat;?So stop your mouths with your 'lection treat,?And wait till your dad comes home."
So the giant pulled him a chestnut stout,?And whittled the boughs away;?The boys and their mother set up a shout,?Said he, "You 're in, and you can't get out,?Bellow as loud as you may."
Off he went, and he growled a tune?As he strode the fields along;?'T is said a buffalo fainted away,?And fell as cold as a lump of clay,?When he heard the giant's song.
But whether the story 's true or not,?It is n't for me to show;?There 's many a thing that 's twice as queer?In somebody's lectures that we hear,?And those are true, you know.
What are those lone ones doing now,?The wife and the children sad??Oh, they are in a terrible rout,?Screaming, and throwing their pudding about,?Acting as they were mad.
They flung it over to Roxbury hills,?They flung it over