Poetry of Oliver Wendell Holmes | Page 9

grew broad,?And shot from ear to ear;?He read the third; a chuckling noise?I now began to hear.
The fourth; he broke into a roar;?The fifth; his waistband split;?The sixth; he burst five buttons off,?And tumbled in a fit.
Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye,?I watched that wretched man,?And since, I never dare to write?As funny as I can.
THE LAST READER
I SOMETIMES sit beneath a tree?And read my own sweet songs;?Though naught they may to others be,?Each humble line prolongs?A tone that might have passed away?But for that scarce remembered lay.
I keep them like a lock or leaf?That some dear girl has given;?Frail record of an hour, as brief?As sunset clouds in heaven,?But spreading purple twilight still?High over memory's shadowed hill.
They lie upon my pathway bleak,?Those flowers that once ran wild,?As on a father's careworn cheek?The ringlets of his child;?The golden mingling with the gray,?And stealing half its snows away.
What care I though the dust is spread?Around these yellow leaves,?Or o'er them his sarcastic thread?Oblivion's insect weaves?Though weeds are tangled on the stream,?It still reflects my morning's beam.
And therefore love I such as smile?On these neglected songs,?Nor deem that flattery's needless wile?My opening bosom wrongs;?For who would trample, at my side,?A few pale buds, my garden's pride?
It may be that my scanty ore?Long years have washed away,?And where were golden sands before?Is naught but common clay;?Still something sparkles in the sun?For memory to look back upon.
And when my name no more is heard,?My lyre no more is known,?Still let me, like a winter's bird,?In silence and alone,?Fold over them the weary wing?Once flashing through the dews of spring.
Yes, let my fancy fondly wrap?My youth in its decline,?And riot in the rosy lap?Of thoughts that once were mine,?And give the worm my little store?When the last reader reads no more!
POETRY:
A METRICAL ESSAY, READ BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY,
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, AUGUST, 1836
TO CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM, THE FOLLOWING METRICAL ESSAY IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.
This Academic Poem presents the simple and partial views of a young person trained after the schools of classical English verse as represented by Pope, Goldsmith, and Campbell, with whose lines his memory was early stocked. It will be observed that it deals chiefly with the constructive side of the poet's function. That which makes him a poet is not the power of writing melodious rhymes, it is not the possession of ordinary human sensibilities nor even of both these qualities in connection with each other. I should rather say, if I were now called upon to define it, it is the power of transfiguring the experiences and shows of life into an aspect which comes from his imagination and kindles that of others. Emotion is its stimulus and language furnishes its expression; but these are not all, as some might infer was the doctrine of the poem before the reader.
A common mistake made by young persons who suppose themselves to have the poetical gift is that their own spiritual exaltation finds a true expression in the conventional phrases which are borrowed from the voices of the singers whose inspiration they think they share.
Looking at this poem as an expression of some aspects of the /ars poetica/, with some passages which I can read even at this mature period of life without blushing for them, it may stand as the most serious representation of my early efforts. Intended as it was for public delivery, many of its paragraphs may betray the fact by their somewhat rhetorical and sonorous character.
SCENES of my youth! awake its slumbering fire!?Ye winds of Memory, sweep the silent lyre!?Ray of the past, if yet thou canst appear,?Break through the clouds of Fancy's waning year;?Chase from her breast the thin autumnal snow,?If leaf or blossom still is fresh below!
Long have I wandered; the returning tide?Brought back an exile to his cradle's side;?And as my bark her time-worn flag unrolled,?To greet the land-breeze with its faded fold,?So, in remembrance of my boyhood's time,?I lift these ensigns of neglected rhyme;?Oh, more than blest, that, all my wanderings through,?My anchor falls where first my pennons flew!
. . . . . . . . .
The morning light, which rains its quivering beams?Wide o'er the plains, the summits, and the streams,?In one broad blaze expands its golden glow?On all that answers to its glance below;?Yet, changed on earth, each far reflected ray?Braids with fresh hues the shining brow of day;?Now, clothed in blushes by the painted flowers,?Tracks on their cheeks the rosy-fingered hours;?Now, lost in shades, whose dark entangled leaves?Drip at the noontide from their pendent eaves,?Fades into gloom, or gleams in light again?From every dew-drop on the jewelled plain.
We, like the leaf, the summit, or the wave,?Reflect the light our common nature gave,?But every sunbeam, falling from her throne,?Wears on our hearts some coloring of our own?Chilled in the slave, and burning in