Poetry of Oliver Wendell Holmes | Page 5

female, Katydid
I know it by the trill
That quivers
through thy piercing notes,
So petulant and shrill;
I think there is a
knot of you
Beneath the hollow tree,--
A knot of spinster
Katydids,---
Do Katydids drink tea?
Oh tell me where did Katy live,
And what did Katy do?
And was
she very fair and young,
And yet so wicked, too?
Did Katy love a
naughty man,
Or kiss more cheeks than one?
I warrant Katy did no
more
Than many a Kate has done.
Dear me! I'll tell you all about
My fuss with little Jane,
And Ann,
with whom I used to walk
So often down the lane,
And all that tore
their locks of black,
Or wet their eyes of blue,--
Pray tell me,
sweetest 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