Poetry of Oliver Wendell Holmes | Page 7

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 the plain,

And all over Milton and Dorchester too
Great lumps of pudding the
giants threw;
They tumbled as thick as rain.
Giant and mammoth have passed away,
For ages have floated by;

The suet is hard as a marrow-bone,
And every plum is turned to a
stone,
But there the puddings lie.
And if, some pleasant afternoon,
You 'll ask me out to ride,
The
whole of the story I will tell,
And you shall see where the puddings
fell,
And pay for the punch beside.
TO THE PORTRAIT OF "A LADY"
IN THE ATHENAEUM
GALLERY
WELL, Miss, I wonder where you live,
I wonder what's your name,

I wonder how you came to be
In such a stylish frame;
Perhaps
you were a favorite child,
Perhaps an only one;
Perhaps your
friends were not aware
You had your portrait done
Yet you must be a harmless soul;
I cannot think that Sin
Would
care to throw his loaded dice,
With such a stake to win;
I cannot
think you would provoke
The poet's wicked pen,
Or make young
women bite their lips,
Or ruin fine young men.
Pray, did you ever hear, my love,
Of boys that go about,
Who, for a
very trifling sum,
Will snip one's picture out?
I'm not averse to red
and white,
But all things have their place,
I think a profile cut in
black
Would suit your style of face!
I love sweet features; I will own
That I should like myself
To see
my portrait on a wall,
Or bust upon a shelf;
But nature sometimes
makes one up

Of such sad odds and ends,
It really might be quite as
well
Hushed up among one's friends!

THE COMET
THE Comet! He is on his way,
And singing as he flies;
The
whizzing planets shrink before
The spectre of the skies;
Ah! well
may regal orbs burn blue,
And satellites turn pale,
Ten million
cubic miles of head,
Ten billion leagues of tail!
On, on by whistling spheres of light
He flashes and he flames;
He
turns not to the left nor right,
He asks them not their names;
One
spurn from his demoniac heel,--
Away, away they fly,
Where
darkness might be bottled up
And sold for "Tyrian dye."
And what would happen to the land,
And how would look the sea,

If in the bearded devil's path
Our earth should chance to be?
Full
hot and high the sea would boil,
Full red the forests gleam;

Methought I saw and heard it all
In a dyspeptic dream!
I saw a tutor take his tube
The Comet's course to spy;
I heard a
scream,--the gathered rays
Had stewed the tutor's eye;
I saw a
fort,--the soldiers all
Were armed with goggles green;
Pop cracked
the guns! whiz flew the balls!
Bang went the magazine!
I saw a poet dip a scroll
Each moment in a tub,
I read upon the
warping back,
"The Dream of Beelzebub;"
He could not see his
verses burn,
Although his brain was fried,
And ever and anon he
bent
To wet them as they dried.
I saw the scalding pitch roll down
The crackling, sweating pines,

And streams of smoke, like water-spouts,
Burst through the rumbling
mines;
I asked the firemen why they made

Such noise about the
town;
They answered not,--but all the while
The brakes went up
and down.
I saw a roasting pullet sit
Upon a baking egg;
I saw a cripple scorch
his hand
Extinguishing his leg;
I saw nine geese upon the wing


Towards the frozen pole,
And every mother's gosling fell
Crisped to
a crackling coal.
I saw the ox that browsed the grass
Writhe in the blistering rays,

The herbage in his shrinking jaws
Was all a fiery blaze;
I saw huge
fishes, boiled to rags,
Bob through the bubbling brine;
And
thoughts of supper crossed my soul;
I had been rash at mine.
Strange sights! strange sounds! Oh fearful dream!
Its memory haunts
me still,
The steaming sea, the crimson glare,
That wreathed each
wooded hill;
Stranger! if through thy reeling brain
Such midnight
visions sweep,
Spare, spare, oh, spare thine evening meal,
And
sweet shall be thy sleep!
THE MUSIC-GRINDERS
THERE are three ways in which men take
One's money from his
purse,
And very hard it is to tell
Which of the three is worse;
But
all of them are bad enough
To make a body curse.
You're riding out some pleasant day,
And counting up your gains;

A