The Iron Gate and Other Poems | Page 8

Oliver Wendell Holmes
little arc has spanned!
See on this opening page the names renowned?Tombed in these records on our dusty shelves,?Scarce on the scroll of living memory found,?Save where the wan-eyed antiquarian delves;?Shadows they seem; ab, what are we ourselves?
Pale ghosts of Bowdoin, Winthrop, Willard, West,?Sages of busy brain and wrinkled brow,?Searchers of Nature's secrets unconfessed,?Asking of all things Whence and Why and How--?What problems meet your larger vision now?
Has Gannett tracked the wild Aurora's path??Has Bowdoin found his all-surrounding sphere??What question puzzles ciphering Philomath??Could Williams make the hidden causes clear?Of the Dark Day that filled the land with fear?
Dear ancient school-boys! Nature taught to them?The simple lessons of the star and flower,?Showed them strange sights; how on a single stem,--?Admire the marvels of Creative Power!--?Twin apples grew, one sweet, the other sour;
How from the hill-top where our eyes beheld?In even ranks the plumed and bannered maize?Range its long columns, in the days of old?The live volcano shot its angry blaze,--?Dead since the showers of Noah's watery days;
How, when the lightning split the mighty rock,?The spreading fury of the shaft was spent!?How the young scion joined the alien stock,?And when and where the homeless swallows went?To pass the winter of their discontent.
Scant were the gleanings in those years of dearth;?No Cuvier yet had clothed the fossil bones?That slumbered, waiting for their second birth;?No Lyell read the legend of the stones;?Science still pointed to her empty thrones.
Dreaming of orbs to eyes of earth unknown,?Herschel looked heavenwards in the starlight pale;?Lost in those awful depths he trod alone,?Laplace stood mute before the lifted veil;?While home-bred Humboldt trimmed his toy ship's sail.
No mortal feet these loftier heights had gained?Whence the wide realms of Nature we descry;?In vain their eyes our longing fathers strained?To scan with wondering gaze the summits high?That far beneath their children's footpaths lie.
Smile at their first small ventures as we may,?The school-boy's copy shapes the scholar's hand,?Their grateful memory fills our hearts to-day;?Brave, hopeful, wise, this bower of peace they planned,?While war's dread ploughshare scarred the suffering land.
Child of our children's children yet unborn,?When on this yellow page you turn your eyes,?Where the brief record of this May-day morn?In phrase antique and faded letters lies,?How vague, how pale our flitting ghosts will rise!
Yet in our veins the blood ran warm and red,?For us the fields were green, the skies were blue,?Though from our dust the spirit long has fled,?We lived, we loved, we toiled, we dreamed like you,?Smiled at our sires and thought how much we knew.
Oh might our spirits for one hour return,?When the next century rounds its hundredth ring,?All the strange secrets it shall teach to learn,?To hear the larger truths its years shall bring,?Its wiser sages talk, its sweeter minstrels sing!
THE SCHOOL-BOY
Read at the Centennial Celebration of the?foundation of Phillips Academy, Andover.
1778-1878
THESE hallowed precincts, long to memory dear,?Smile with fresh welcome as our feet draw near;?With softer gales the opening leaves are fanned,?With fairer hues the kindling flowers expand,?The rose-bush reddens with the blush of June,?The groves are vocal with their minstrels' tune,?The mighty elm, beneath whose arching shade?The wandering children of the forest strayed,?Greets the bright morning in its bridal dress,?And spreads its arms the gladsome dawn to bless.?Is it an idle dream that nature shares?Our joys, our griefs, our pastimes, and our cares??Is there no summons when, at morning's call,?The sable vestments of the darkness fall??Does not meek evening's low-voiced Ave blend?With the soft vesper as its notes ascend??Is there no whisper in the perfumed air?When the sweet bosom of the rose is bare??Does not the sunshine call us to rejoice??Is there no meaning in the storm-cloud's voice??No silent message when from midnight skies?Heaven looks upon us with its myriad eyes?
Or shift the mirror; say our dreams diffuse?O'er life's pale landscape their celestial hues,?Lend heaven the rainbow it has never known,?And robe the earth in glories not its own,?Sing their own music in the summer breeze,?With fresher foliage clothe the stately trees,?Stain the June blossoms with a livelier dye?And spread a bluer azure on the sky,--?Blest be the power that works its lawless will?And finds the weediest patch an Eden still;?No walls so fair as those our fancies build,--?No views so bright as those our visions gild!
So ran my lines, as pen and paper met,?The truant goose-quill travelling like Planchette;?Too ready servant, whose deceitful ways?Full many a slipshod line, alas! betrays;?Hence of the rhyming thousand not a few?Have builded worse--a great deal--than they knew.
What need of idle fancy to adorn?Our mother's birthplace on her birthday morn??Hers are the blossoms of eternal spring,?From these green boughs her new-fledged birds take wing,?These echoes hear their earliest carols sung,?In this old nest the brood is ever young.?If some tired wanderer, resting from his flight,?Amid the gay young choristers alight,?These gather round him, mark his faded plumes?That faintly still the far-off grove
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