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

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СКАЧАТЬ To catch the birds that sing the ditties;

       Upon my soul, it makes me laugh

       To read these letters from Committees!

       They're all so loving and so fair—

       All for your sake such kind compunction;

       'T would save your carriage half its wear

       To touch its wheels with such an unction!

      Why, who am I, to lift me here

       And beg such learned folk to listen,

       To ask a smile, or coax a tear

       Beneath these stoic lids to glisten?

       As well might some arterial thread

       Ask the whole frame to feel it gushing,

       While throbbing fierce from heel to head

       The vast aortic tide was rushing.

      As well some hair-like nerve might strain

       To set its special streamlet going,

       While through the myriad-channelled brain

       The burning flood of thought was flowing;

       Or trembling fibre strive to keep

       The springing haunches gathered shorter,

       While the scourged racer, leap on leap,

       Was stretching through the last hot quarter!

      Ah me! you take the bud that came

       Self-sown in your poor garden's borders,

       And hand it to the stately dame

       That florists breed for, all she orders.

       She thanks you—it was kindly meant—

       (A pale afair, not worth the keeping,)—

       Good morning; and your bud is sent

       To join the tea-leaves used for sweeping.

      Not always so, kind hearts and true—

       For such I know are round me beating;

       Is not the bud I offer you,

       Fresh gathered for the hour of meeting,

       Pale though its outer leaves may be,

       Rose-red in all its inner petals?—

       Where the warm life we cannot see—

       The life of love that gave it—settles.

      We meet from regions far away,

       Like rills from distant mountains streaming;

       The sun is on Francisco's bay,

       O'er Chesapeake the lighthouse gleaming;

       While summer girds the still bayou

       In chains of bloom, her bridal token,

       Monadnock sees the sky grow blue,

       His crystal bracelet yet unbroken.

      Yet Nature bears the selfsame heart

       Beneath her russet-mantled bosom

       As where, with burning lips apart,

       She breathes and white magnolias blossom;

       The selfsame founts her chalice fill

       With showery sunlight running over,

       On fiery plain and frozen hill,

       On myrtle-beds and fields of clover.

      I give you Home! its crossing lines

       United in one golden suture,

       And showing every day that shines

       The present growing to the future—

       A flag that bears a hundred stars

       In one bright ring, with love for centre,

       Fenced round with white and crimson bars

       No prowling treason dares to enter!

      O brothers, home may be a word

       To make affection's living treasure,

       The wave an angel might have stirred,

       A stagnant pool of selfish pleasure;

       HOME! It is where the day-star springs

       And where the evening sun reposes,

       Where'er the eagle spreads his wings,

       From northern pines to southern roses!

A SENTIMENT

       Table of Contents

      A TRIPLE health to Friendship, Science, Art,

       From heads and hands that own a common heart!

       Each in its turn the others' willing slave,

       Each in its season strong to heal and save.

      Friendship's blind service, in the hour of need,

       Wipes the pale face, and lets the victim bleed.

       Science must stop to reason and explain;

       ART claps his finger on the streaming vein.

      But Art's brief memory fails the hand at last;

       Then SCIENCE lifts the flambeau of the past.

       When both their equal impotence deplore,

       When Learning sighs, and Skill can do no more,

       The tear of FRIENDSHIP pours its heavenly balm,

       And soothes the pang no anodyne may calm

       May 1, 1855.

RIP VAN WINKLE, M. D.

       Table of Contents

      AN AFTER-DINNER PRESCRIPTION TAKEN BY THE MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY, AT THEIR MEETING HELD MAY 25, 1870

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