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

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       Though winged with life through all its radiant shores,

       Creation flowed with unexhausted stores

       Cherub and seraph had not yet enjoyed;

       For this he called thee from the quickening void!

       Nor this alone; a larger gift was thine,

       A mightier purpose swelled his vast design

       Thought—conscience—will—to make them all thine own,

       He rent a pillar from the eternal throne!

      Made in his image, thou must nobly dare

       The thorny crown of sovereignty to share.

       With eye uplifted, it is thine to view,

       From thine own centre, Heaven's o'erarching blue;

       So round thy heart a beaming circle lies

       No fiend can blot, no hypocrite disguise;

       From all its orbs one cheering voice is heard,

       Full to thine ear it bears the Father's word,

       Now, as in Eden where his first-born trod

       "Seek thine own welfare, true to man and God!"

       Think not too meanly of thy low estate;

       Thou hast a choice; to choose is to create!

       Remember whose the sacred lips that tell,

       Angels approve thee when thy choice is well;

       Remember, One, a judge of righteous men,

       Swore to spare Sodom if she held but ten!

       Use well the freedom which thy Master gave,

       (Think'st thou that Heaven can tolerate a slave?)

       And He who made thee to be just and true

       Will bless thee, love thee—ay, respect thee too!

      Nature has placed thee on a changeful tide,

       To breast its waves, but not without a guide;

       Yet, as the needle will forget its aim,

       Jarred by the fury of the electric flame,

       As the true current it will falsely feel,

       Warped from its axis by a freight of steel;

       So will thy CONSCIENCE lose its balanced truth

       If passion's lightning fall upon thy youth,

       So the pure effluence quit its sacred hold

       Girt round too deeply with magnetic gold.

       Go to yon tower, where busy science plies

       Her vast antennae, feeling through the skies

       That little vernier on whose slender lines

       The midnight taper trembles as it shines,

       A silent index, tracks the planets' march

       In all their wanderings through the ethereal arch;

       Tells through the mist where dazzled Mercury burns,

       And marks the spot where Uranus returns.

       So, till by wrong or negligence effaced,

       The living index which thy Maker traced

       Repeats the line each starry Virtue draws

       Through the wide circuit of creation's laws;

       Still tracks unchanged the everlasting ray

       Where the dark shadows of temptation stray,

       But, once defaced, forgets the orbs of light,

       And leaves thee wandering o'er the expanse of night.

      "What is thy creed?" a hundred lips inquire;

       "Thou seekest God beneath what Christian spire?"

       Nor ask they idly, for uncounted lies

       Float upward on the smoke of sacrifice;

       When man's first incense rose above the plain,

       Of earth's two altars one was built by Cain!

       Uncursed by doubt, our earliest creed we take;

       We love the precepts for the teacher's sake;

       The simple lessons which the nursery taught

       Fell soft and stainless on the buds of thought,

       And the full blossom owes its fairest hue

       To those sweet tear-drops of affection's dew.

       Too oft the light that led our earlier hours

       Fades with the perfume of our cradle flowers;

       The clear, cold question chills to frozen doubt;

       Tired of beliefs, we dread to live without

       Oh then, if Reason waver at thy side,

       Let humbler Memory be thy gentle guide;

       Go to thy birthplace, and, if faith was there,

       Repeat thy father's creed, thy mother's prayer!

      Faith loves to lean on Time's destroying arm,

       And age, like distance, lends a double charm;

       In dim cathedrals, dark with vaulted gloom,

       What holy awe invests the saintly tomb!

       There pride will bow, and anxious care expand,

       And creeping avarice come with open hand;

       The gay can weep, the impious can adore,

       From morn's first glimmerings on the chancel floor

       Till dying sunset sheds his crimson stains

       Through the faint halos of the irised panes.

       Yet there are graves, whose rudely-shapen sod

       Bears the fresh footprints where the sexton trod;

       Graves where the verdure has not dared to shoot,

       Where the chance wild-flower has not fixed its root,

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