The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes Part 14

If ever, trampling on her ancient path, Cankered by treachery or inflamed by wrath, With smooth "Resolves" or with discordant cries, The mad Briareus of disunion rise, Chiefs of New England! by your sires' renown, Dash the red torches of the rebel down!

Flood his black hearthstone till its flames expire, Though your old Sachem fanned his council-fire!

But if at last, her fading cycle run, The tongue must forfeit what the arm has won, Then rise, wild Ocean! roll thy surging shock Full on old Plymouth's desecrated rock!

Scale the proud shaft degenerate hands have hewn, Where bleeding Valor stained the flowers of June!

Sweep in one tide her spires and turrets down, And howl her dirge above Monadnock's crown!

List not the tale; the Pilgrim's hallowed sh.o.r.e, Though strewn with weeds, is granite at the core; Oh, rather trust that He who made her free Will keep her true as long as faith shall be!

Farewell! yet lingering through the destined hour, Leave, sweet Enchantress, one memorial flower!

An Angel, floating o'er the waste of snow That clad our Western desert, long ago, (The same fair spirit who, unseen by day, Shone as a star along the Mayflower's way,)-- Sent, the first herald of the Heavenly plan, To choose on earth a resting-place for man,-- Tired with his flight along the unvaried field, Turned to soar upwards, when his glance revealed A calm, bright bay enclosed in rocky bounds, And at its entrance stood three sister mounds.

The Angel spake: "This threefold hill shall be The home of Arts, the nurse of Liberty!

One stately summit from its shaft shall pour Its deep-red blaze along the darkened sh.o.r.e; Emblem of thoughts that, kindling far and wide, In danger's night shall be a nation's guide.

One swelling crest the citadel shall crown, Its slanted bastions black with battle's frown, And bid the sons that tread its scowling heights Bare their strong arms for man and all his rights!

One silent steep along the northern wave Shall hold the patriarch's and the hero's grave; When fades the torch, when o'er the peaceful scene The embattled fortress smiles in living green, The cross of Faith, the anchor staff of Hope, Shall stand eternal on its gra.s.sy slope; There through all time shall faithful Memory tell, 'Here Virtue toiled, and Patriot Valor fell; Thy free, proud fathers slumber at thy side; Live as they lived, or perish as they died!'"

AN AFTER-DINNER POEM

(TERPSICh.o.r.e)

Read at the Annual Dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 24, 1843.

IN narrowest girdle, O reluctant Muse, In closest frock and Cinderella shoes, Bound to the foot-lights for thy brief display, One zephyr step, and then dissolve away!

Short is the s.p.a.ce that G.o.ds and men can spare To Song's twin brother when she is not there.

Let others water every l.u.s.ty line, As Homer's heroes did their purple wine; Pierian revellers! Know in strains like these The native juice, the real honest squeeze,--- Strains that, diluted to the twentieth power, In yon grave temple might have filled an hour.

Small room for Fancy's many-chorded lyre, For Wit's bright rockets with their trains of fire, For Pathos, struggling vainly to surprise The iron tutor's tear-denying eyes, For Mirth, whose finger with delusive wile Turns the grim key of many a rusty smile, For Satire, emptying his corrosive flood On hissing Folly's gas-exhaling brood, The pun, the fun, the moral, and the joke, The hit, the thrust, the pugilistic poke,-- Small s.p.a.ce for these, so pressed by n.i.g.g.ard Time, Like that false matron, known to nursery rhyme,-- Insidious Morey,--scarce her tale begun, Ere listening infants weep the story done.

Oh, had we room to rip the mighty bags That Time, the harlequin, has stuffed with rags!

Grant us one moment to unloose the strings, While the old graybeard shuts his leather wings.

But what a heap of motley trash appears Crammed in the bundles of successive years!

As the lost rustic on some festal day Stares through the concourse in its vast array,-- Where in one cake a throng of faces runs, All stuck together like a sheet of buns,-- And throws the bait of some unheeded name, Or shoots a wink with most uncertain aim, So roams my vision, wandering over all, And strives to choose, but knows not where to fall.

Skins of flayed authors, husks of dead reviews, The turn-coat's clothes, the office-seeker's shoes, Sc.r.a.ps from cold feasts, where conversation runs Through mouldy toasts to oxidated puns, And grating songs a listening crowd endures, Rasped from the throats of bellowing amateurs; Sermons, whose writers played such dangerous tricks Their own heresiarchs called them heretics, (Strange that one term such distant poles should link, The Priestleyan's copper and the Puseyan's zinc); Poems that shuffle with superfluous legs A blindfold minuet over addled eggs, Where all the syllables that end in ed, Like old dragoons, have cuts across the head; Essays so dark Champollion might despair To guess what mummy of a thought was there, Where our poor English, striped with foreign phrase, Looks like a zebra in a parson's chaise; Lectures that cut our dinners down to roots, Or prove (by monkeys) men should stick to fruits,-- Delusive error, as at trifling charge Professor Gripes will certify at large; Mesmeric pamphlets, which to facts appeal, Each fact as slippery as a fresh-caught eel; And figured heads, whose hieroglyphs invite To wandering knaves that discount fools at sight: Such things as these, with heaps of unpaid bills, And candy puffs and h.o.m.oeopathic pills, And ancient bell-crowns with contracted rim, And bonnets hideous with expanded brim, And coats whose memory turns the sartor pale, Their sequels tapering like a lizard's tale,-- How might we spread them to the smiling day, And toss them, fluttering like the new-mown hay, To laughter's light or sorrow's pitying shower, Were these brief minutes lengthened to an hour.

The narrow moments fit like Sunday shoes,-- How vast the heap, how quickly must we choose!

A few small sc.r.a.ps from out his mountain ma.s.s We s.n.a.t.c.h in haste, and let the vagrant pa.s.s.

This shrunken CRUST that Cerberus could not bite, Stamped (in one corner) "Pickwick copyright,"

Kneaded by youngsters, raised by flattery's yeast, Was once a loaf, and helped to make a feast.

He for whose sake the glittering show appears Has sown the world with laughter and with tears, And they whose welcome wets the b.u.mper's brim Have wit and wisdom,--for they all quote him.

So, many a tongue the evening hour prolongs With spangled speeches,--let alone the songs; Statesmen grow merry, lean attorneys laugh, And weak teetotals warm to half and half, And beardless Tullys, new to festive scenes, Cut their first crop of youth's precocious greens, And wits stand ready for impromptu claps, With loaded barrels and percussion caps, And Pathos, cantering through the minor keys, Waves all her onions to the trembling breeze; While the great Feasted views with silent glee His scattered limbs in Yankee frica.s.see.

Sweet is the scene where genial friends.h.i.+p plays The pleasing game of interchanging praise.

Self-love, grimalkin of the human heart, Is ever pliant to the master's art; Soothed with a word, she peacefully withdraws And sheathes in velvet her obnoxious claws, And thrills the hand that smooths her glossy fur With the light tremor of her grateful purr.

But what sad music fills the quiet hall, If on her back a feline rival fall!

And oh, what noises shake the tranquil house If old Self-interest cheats her of a mouse.

Thou, O my country, hast thy foolish ways, Too apt to purr at every stranger's praise; But if the stranger touch thy modes or laws, Off goes the velvet and out come the claws!

And thou, Ill.u.s.trious! but too poorly paid In toasts from Pickwick for thy great crusade, Though, while the echoes labored with thy name, The public trap denied thy little game, Let other lips our jealous laws revile,-- The marble Talfourd or the rude Carlyle,-- But on thy lids, which Heaven forbids to close Where'er the light of kindly nature glows, Let not the dollars that a churl denies Weigh like the s.h.i.+llings on a dead man's eyes!

Or, if thou wilt, be more discreetly blind, Nor ask to see all wide extremes combined.

Not in our wastes the dainty blossoms smile That crowd the gardens of thy scanty isle.

There white-cheeked Luxury weaves a thousand charms; Here sun-browned Labor swings his naked arms.

Long are the furrows he must trace between The ocean's azure and the prairie's green; Full many a blank his destined realm displays, Yet sees the promise of his riper days Far through yon depths the panting engine moves, His chariots ringing in their steel-shod grooves; And Erie's naiad flings her diamond wave O'er the wild sea-nymph in her distant cave!

While tasks like these employ his anxious hours, What if his cornfields are not edged with flowers?

Though bright as silver the meridian beams s.h.i.+ne through the crystal of thine English streams, Turbid and dark the mighty wave is whirled That drains our Andes and divides a world!

But lo! a PARCHMENT! Surely it would seem The sculptured impress speaks of power supreme; Some grave design the solemn page must claim That shows so broadly an emblazoned name.

A sovereign's promise! Look, the lines afford All Honor gives when Caution asks his word: There sacred Faith has laid her snow-white hands, And awful Justice knit her iron bands; Yet every leaf is stained with treachery's dye, And every letter crusted with a lie.

Alas! no treason has degraded yet The Arab's salt, the Indian's calumet; A simple rite, that bears the wanderer's pledge, Blunts the keen shaft and turns the dagger's edge; While jockeying senates stop to sign and seal, And freeborn statesmen legislate to steal.

Rise, Europe, tottering with thine Atlas load, Turn thy proud eye to Freedom's blest abode, And round her forehead, wreathed with heavenly flame, Bind the dark garland of her daughter's shame!

Ye ocean clouds, that wrap the angry blast, Coil her stained ensign round its haughty mast, Or tear the fold that wears so foul a scar, And drive a bolt through every blackened star!

Once more,--once only,--- we must stop so soon: What have we here? A GERMAN-SILVER SPOON; A cheap utensil, which we often see Used by the dabblers in aesthetic tea, Of slender fabric, somewhat light and thin, Made of mixed metal, chiefly lead and tin; The bowl is shallow, and the handle small, Marked in large letters with the name JEAN PAUL.

Small as it is, its powers are pa.s.sing strange, For all who use it show a wondrous change; And first, a fact to make the barbers stare, It beats Maca.s.sar for the growth of hair.

See those small youngsters whose expansive ears Maternal kindness grazed with frequent shears; Each bristling crop a dangling ma.s.s becomes, And all the spoonies turn to Absaloms Nor this alone its magic power displays, It alters strangely all their works and ways; With uncouth words they tire their tender lungs, The same bald phrases on their hundred tongues "Ever" "The Ages" in their page appear, "Alway" the bedlamite is called a "Seer;"

On every leaf the "earnest" sage may scan, Portentous bore! their "many-sided" man,-- A weak eclectic, groping vague and dim, Whose every angle is a half-starved whim, Blind as a mole and curious as a lynx, Who rides a beetle, which he calls a "Sphinx."

And oh, what questions asked in clubfoot rhyme Of Earth the tongueless and the deaf-mute Time!

Here babbling "Insight" shouts in Nature's ears His last conundrum on the orbs and spheres; There Self-inspection sucks its little thumb, With "Whence am I?" and "Wherefore did I come?"

Deluded infants! will they ever know Some doubts must darken o'er the world below, Though all the Platos of the nursery trail Their "clouds of glory" at the go-cart's tail?

Oh might these couplets their attention claim That gain their author the Philistine's name (A stubborn race, that, spurning foreign law, Was much belabored with an a.s.s's jaw.)

Melodious Laura! From the sad retreats That hold thee, smothered with excess of sweets, Shade of a shadow, spectre of a dream, Glance thy wan eye across the Stygian stream!

The slipshod dreamer treads thy fragrant halls, The sophist's cobwebs hang thy roseate walls, And o'er the crotchets of thy jingling tunes The bard of mystery scrawls his crooked "runes."

Yes, thou art gone, with all the tuneful hordes That candied thoughts in amber-colored words, And in the precincts of thy late abodes The clattering verse-wright hammers Orphic odes.

Thou, soft as zephyr, wast content to fly On the gilt pinions of a balmy sigh; He, vast as Phoebus on his burning wheels, Would stride through ether at Orion's heels.

Thy emblem, Laura, was a perfume-jar, And thine, young Orpheus, is a pewter star.

The balance trembles,--be its verdict told When the new jargon slumbers with the old!

Cease, playful G.o.ddess! From thine airy bound Drop like a feather softly to the ground; This light bolero grows a ticklish dance, And there is mischief in thy kindling glance.

To-morrow bids thee, with rebuking frown, Change thy gauze tunic for a home-made gown, Too blest by fortune if the pa.s.sing day Adorn thy bosom with its frail bouquet, But oh, still happier if the next forgets Thy daring steps and dangerous pirouettes!

MEDICAL POEMS