The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Complete. Oliver Wendell Holmes

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">       And give her to the god of storms,

       The lightning and the gale!

THE LAST LEAF

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      This poem was suggested by the appearance in one of our streets of a venerable relic of the Revolution, said to be one of the party who threw the tea overboard in Boston Harbor. He was a fine monumental specimen in his cocked hat and knee breeches, with his buckled shoes and his sturdy cane. The smile with which I, as a young man, greeted him, meant no disrespect to an honored fellow-citizen whose costume was out of date, but whose patriotism never changed with years. I do not recall any earlier example of this form of verse, which was commended by the fastidious Edgar Allan Poe, who made a copy of the whole poem which I have in his own handwriting. Good Abraham Lincoln had a great liking for the poem, and repeated it from memory to Governor Andrew, as the governor himself told me.

      I SAW him once before,

       As he passed by the door,

       And again

       The pavement stones resound,

       As he totters o'er the ground

       With his cane.

      They say that in his prime,

       Ere the pruning-knife of Time

       Cut him down,

       Not a better man was found

       By the Crier on his round

       Through the town.

      But now he walks the streets,

       And he looks at all he meets

       Sad and wan,

       And he shakes his feeble head,

       That it seems as if he said,

       "They are gone."

      The mossy marbles rest

       On the lips that he has prest

       In their bloom,

       And the names he loved to hear

       Have been carved for many a year

       On the tomb.

      My grandmamma has said—

       Poor old lady, she is dead

       Long ago—

       That he had a Roman nose,

       And his cheek was like a rose

       In the snow.

      But now his nose is thin,

       And it rests upon his chin

       Like a staff,

       And a crook is in his back,

       And a melancholy crack

       In his laugh.

      I know it is a sin

       For me to sit and grin

       At him here;

       But the old three-cornered hat,

       And the breeches, and all that,

       Are so queer!

      And if I should live to be

       The last leaf upon the tree

       In the spring,

       Let them smile, as I do now,

       At the old forsaken bough

       Where I cling.

THE CAMBRIDGE CHURCHYARD

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      OUR ancient church! its lowly tower,

       Beneath the loftier spire,

       Is shadowed when the sunset hour

       Clothes the tall shaft in fire;

       It sinks beyond the distant eye

       Long ere the glittering vane,

       High wheeling in the western sky,

       Has faded o'er the plain.

      Like Sentinel and Nun, they keep

       Their vigil on the green;

       One seems to guard, and one to weep,

       The dead that lie between;

       And both roll out, so full and near,

       Their music's mingling waves,

       They shake the grass, whose pennoned spear

       Leans on the narrow graves.

      The stranger parts the flaunting weeds,

       Whose seeds the winds have strown

       So thick, beneath the line he reads,

       They shade the sculptured stone;

       The child unveils his clustered brow,

       And ponders for a while

       The graven willow's pendent bough,

       Or rudest cherub's smile.

      But what to them the dirge, the knell?

       These were the mourner's share—

       The sullen clang, whose heavy swell

       Throbbed through the beating air;

       The rattling cord, the rolling stone,

       The shelving sand that slid,

       And, far beneath, with hollow tone

       Rung on the coffin's lid.

      The slumberer's mound grows fresh and green,

       Then slowly disappears;

       The mosses creep, the gray stones lean,

       Earth hides his date and years;

       But, long before the once-loved name

       Is sunk or worn away,

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