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

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СКАЧАТЬ And set them all a flying;

       I saw the shirts and petticoats

       Go riding off like witches;

       I lost, ah! bitterly I wept—

       I lost my Sunday breeches!

      I saw them straddling through the air,

       Alas! too late to win them;

       I saw them chase the clouds, as if

       The devil had been in them;

       They were my darlings and my pride,

       My boyhood's only riches—

       "Farewell, farewell," I faintly cried—

       "My breeches! Oh my breeches!"

      That night I saw them in my dreams,

       How changed from what I knew them!

       The dews had steeped their faded threads,

       The winds had whistled through them

       I saw the wide and ghastly rents

       Where demon claws had torn them;

       A hole was in their amplest part,

       As if an imp had worn them.

      I have had many happy years,

       And tailors kind and clever,

       But those young pantaloons have gone

       Forever and forever!

       And not till fate has cut the last

       Of all my earthly stitches,

       This aching heart shall cease to mourn

       My loved, my long-lost breeches!

THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS

       Table of Contents

      I WROTE some lines once on a time

       In wondrous merry mood,

       And thought, as usual, men would say

       They were exceeding good.

      They were so queer, so very queer,

       I laughed as I would die;

       Albeit, in the general way,

       A sober man am I.

      I called my servant, and he came;

       How kind it was of him

       To mind a slender man like me,

       He of the mighty limb.

      "These to the printer," I exclaimed,

       And, in my humorous way,

       I added, (as a trifling jest,)

       "There'll be the devil to pay."

      He took the paper, and I watched,

       And saw him peep within;

       At the first line he read, his face

       Was all upon the grin.

      He read the next; the grin 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

       Table of Contents

      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 СКАЧАТЬ