  WHEN we come to consider Doctor Holmes on the poet side of his many-sided nature, his own words at the famous Breakfast-Table are vividly brought to mind: "The works of other men live, but their personality dies out of their labors; the poet, who reproduces himself in his creation, as no other artist does or can, goes down to posterity with all his personality blended with whatever is imperishable in his song.... A single lyric is enough, if one can only find in his soul and finish in his intellect one of those jewels fit to sparkle on the stretched forefinger of all time." In the poems of Doctor Holmes we are quite sure there are many just such lyrics that the world will not willingly let die. The Last Leaf, The Voiceless, The Chambered Nautilus, The Oliver Wendell Holmes touches the heart as well as the intellect, and that aside from his power as a humorist, is one great secret of his success. Listen, for instance, to this exquisite bit: Yes, dear departed, cherished days Could Memory's hand restore Your Morning light, your evening rays From Time's gray urn once more,— Then might this restless heart be still, This straining eye might close, And Hope her fainting pinions fold, While the fair phantoms rose. But, like a child in ocean's arms, We strive against the stream, Each moment farther from the shore Where life's young fountains gleam;— Each moment fainter wave the fields, And wider rolls the sea; The mist grows dark,—the sun goes down,— Day breaks,—and where are we? And what a dainty touch is given to this Song of the Sun-Worshipper's Daughter! Kiss mine eyelids, beauteous Morn Blushing into life new born! Send me violets for my hair And thy russet robe to wear, And thy ring of rosiest hue Set in drops of diamond dew! ******* Kiss my lips, thou Lord of light,Kiss my lips a soft good-night! Westward sinks thy golden car; Leave me but the evening star And my solace that shall be Borrowing all its light from thee. And where will you find a more pathetic picture than that of the old musician in The Silent Melody? Bring me my broken harp, he said; We both are wrecks—but as ye will— Though all its ringing tones have fled, Their echoes linger round it still; It had some golden strings, I know, But that was long—how long!—ago. I cannot see its tarnished gold; I cannot hear its vanished tone; Scarce can my trembling fingers hold The pillared frame so long their own; We both are wrecks—a while ago It had some silver strings, I know. But on them Time too long has played The solemn strain that knows no change, And where of old my fingers strayed The chords they find are new and strange— Yes; iron strings—I know—I know— We both are wrecks of long ago. With pitying smiles the broken harp is brought to him. Not a single string remains. But see! like children overjoyed, His fingers rambling through the void! They gather softly around the old musician. Rapt in his tuneful trance he seems; His fingers move; but not a sound! A silence like the song of dreams.... "There! ye have heard the air," he cries, "That brought the tears from Marian's eyes!" The poem closes with these fine stanzas: Ah, smile not at his fond conceit, Nor deem his fancy wrought in vain; To him the unreal sounds are sweet, No discord mars the silent strain Scored on life's latest, starlit page The voiceless melody of age. Sweet are the lips of all that sing, When Nature's music breathes unsought, So truly shape our tenderest thought, As when by life's decaying fire Our fingers sweep the stringless lyre! Though entirely different in style, Bill and Joe is another of those heart-reaching, tear-starting poems. Listen, for instance, to these few verses: Come, dear old comrade, you and I Will steal an hour from days gone by; The shining days when life was new, And all was bright with morning dew, The lusty days of long ago When you were Bill and I was Joe. ******* You've won the judge's ermined robe,You've taught your name to half the globe, You've sung mankind a deathless strain; You've made the dead past live again; The world may call you what it will, But you and I are Joe and Bill. ******* How Bill forgets his hour of pride,While Joe sits smiling at his side; How Joe, in spite of time's disguise Finds the old schoolmate in his eyes,— Those calm, stern eyes that melt and fill, As Joe looks fondly up at Bill. Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame? A fitful tongue of leaping flame; A giddy whirlwind's fickle gust That lifts a pinch of mortal dust; A few swift years and who can show Which dust was Bill, and which was Joe? The weary idol takes his stand, Holds out his bruised and aching hand, While gaping thousands come and go,— How vain it seems, his empty show! Till all at once his pulses thrill: 'Tis poor old Joe's God bless you, Bill! The earlier poems of Doctor Holmes are frequently written in the favorite measures of Pope and Hood. This is not at all strange when we remember that in the boyhood of Doctor Holmes these two poets were the most popular of all the English bards. In his later poems, however, we find an endless variety of rhythms, and the careful reader will notice in every instance, a wonderful adaptation of the various poetical forms to the particular thought the poet wishes to convey. How well Doctor Holmes understands the "mechanism" of verse may be seen from his Physiology of Versification and the Harmonies of Organic and Animal Life, a valuable article "Respiration," he says, "has an intimate relation to the structure of metrical compositions, and the reason why octosyllabic verse is so easy to read aloud is because it follows more exactly than any other measure the natural rhythm of the respiration.... "The ten syllable, or heroic line has a peculiar majesty from the very fact that its pronunciation requires a longer respiration than is ordinary. "The cÆsura, it is true, comes in at irregular intervals and serves as a breathing place, but its management requires care in reading, and entirely breaks up the natural rhythm of breathing. The reason why the 'common metre' of our hymn books and the fourteen syllable line of Chapman's Homer is such easy reading is because of the short alternate lines of six and eight syllables. One of the most irksome of all measures is the twelve-syllable line in which Drayton's Polyolbion is written. While the fourteen syllable line can be easily divided in half in reading, the twelve syllable one is too much for one expiration and not enough for two, and for this reason has been avoided by poets. "There is, however, the personal equation to be taken into account. A person of quiet temperament and ample chest may habitually breathe but fourteen times in a minute, and the heroic measure will therefore be very easy reading to him; a narrow-chested, nervous person, on the contrary, who breathes oftener than twenty times a minute, may prefer the seven-syllable verse, like that of Dyer's Grongar Hill, to the heroic measure, and quick-breathing children will recite Mother Goose melodies with delight, when long metres would weary and distract them. "Nothing in poetry or in vocal music is widely popular that is not calculated with strict reference to the respiratory function. All the early ballad poetry shows how instinctively the reciters accommodated their rhythm to their breathing: Chevy Chace, or The Babes in the Wood may be taken as an example for verse. God save the King, which has a compass of some half a dozen notes, and takes one expiration, economically used, to each line, may be referred to as the musical illustration. "The unconscious adaptation of voluntary life to the organic rhythm is perhaps a more pervading fact than we have been in the habit of considering it. One can hardly doubt that Spenser breathed So much for the bare vehicle of verse, but the poet himself, as Doctor Holmes says in his review of "Exotics," is a medium, a clairvoyant. "The will is first called in requisition to exclude interfering outward impressions and alien trains of thought. After a certain time the second state or adjustment of the poet's double consciousness (for he has two states, just as the somnambulists have) sets up its own automatic movement, with its special trains of ideas and feelings in the thinking and emotional centres. As soon as the fine frenzy, or quasi trance-state, is fairly established, the consciousness watches the torrent of thoughts and arrests the ones wanted, singly with their fitting expression, or in groups of fortunate sequences which he cannot better by after treatment. As the poetical vocabulary is limited, and its plasticity lends itself only to certain moulds, the mind works under great difficulty, at least until it has acquired by practice such handling of language that every As a writer of humorous poetry, it is safe to say The Height of the Ridiculous, The September Gale, The Hot Season, The Deacon's Master-piece, Nux Postcoenatica, The Stethoscope Song, how many a "cobweb" have they shaken from the tired brain! And where in the whole range of humorous literature will you find a more delightful morsel than the "Parting Word," that follows?— In his Mechanism in Thought and Morals, Doctor Holmes reveals one of the secrets of humorous writing. "The poet," he says, "sits down to his desk with an odd conceit in his brain; and pre "'To-night I would have tears;' and before he rises from his table he has written a burlesque, such as he might think fit to send to one of the comic papers, if these were not so commonly cemeteries of hilarity interspersed with cenotaphs of wit and humor. These strange hysterics of the intelligence which make us pass from weeping to laughter, and from laughter back again to weeping, must be familiar to every impressible nature; and all this is as automatic, involuntary, as entirely self-evolved by a hidden, organic process, as are the changing moods of the laughing and crying woman. The poet always recognizes a dictation ab extra; and we hardly think it a figure of speech when we talk of his inspiration." Of Doctor Holmes' inimitable vers d'occasion we select the following: At the reception given to Harriet Beecher Stowe on her seventieth birthday, at Governor Claflin's beautiful summer residence in Newtonville, Doctor Holmes read the following witty and characteristic poem: If every tongue that speaks her praise For whom I shape my tinkling phrase Were summoned to the table, The vocal chorus that would meet Of mingling accents harsh or sweet From every land and tribe would beat The polyglots of Babel. Briton and Frenchman, Swede and Dane, Turk, Spaniard, Tartar of Ukraine, Hidalgo, Cossack, Cadi, High Dutchman and Low Dutchman, too, The Russian serf, the Polish Jew, Arab, Armenian and Mantchoo Would shout, "We know the lady." Know her! Who knows not Uncle Tom And her he learned his gospel from Has never heard of Moses; Full well the brave black hand we know That gave to freedom's grasp the hoe That killed the weed that used to grow Among the Southern roses. When Archimedes, long ago, Spoke out so grandly "dos pou sto,— Give me a place to stand on, I'll move your planet for you, now," He little dreamed or fancied how The sto at last should find its pou For woman's faith to land on. Her lever was the wand of art, Her fulcrum was the human heart Whence all unfailing aid is; She moved the earth! its thunders pealed, Its mountains shook, its temples reeled, The blood-red fountains were unsealed, And Moloch sunk to Hades. All through the conflict, up and down Marched Uncle Tom and Old John Brown, One ghost, one form ideal, And which was false and which was true. And which was mightier of the two, The wisest sibyl never knew, For both alike were real. Sister, the holy maid does well Who counts her beads in convent cell, Where pale devotion lingers; But she who serves the sufferer's needs, Whose prayers are spelt in loving deeds May trust the Lord will count her beads As well as human fingers. When Truth herself was Slavery's slave Thy hand the prisoned suppliant gave The rainbow wings of fiction. And Truth who soared descends to-day Bearing an angel's wreath away, Its lilies at thy feet to lay With heaven's own benediction. The following poem was read by Doctor Holmes at the Unitarian Festival, June 2, 1882. The waves upbuild the wasting shore: Where mountains towered the billows sweep: Yet still their borrowed spoils restore And raise new empires from the deep. So, while the floods of thought lay waste The old domain of chartered creeds, The heaven-appointed tides will haste To shape new homes for human needs. Be ours to mark with hearts unchilled The change an outworn age deplores; The legend sinks, but Faith shall build A fairer throne on new-found shores, The star shall glow in western skies, That shone o'er Bethlehem's hallowed shrine, And once again the temple rise That crowned the rock of Palestine. Not when the wondering shepherds bowed Did angels sing their latest song, Nor yet to Israel's kneeling crowd Did heaven's one sacred dome belong— Let priest and prophet have their dues, The Levite counts but half a man, Whose proud "salvation of the Jews" Shuts out the good Samaritan! Though scattered far the flock may stray, His own the shepherd still shall claim,— The saints who never learned to pray,— The friends who never spoke his name. That says, "The truth shall make you free," Thy servant still, by loving choice, O keep us faithful unto Thee! Doctor Holmes being unable to attend the annual reunion of the Harvard Club in New York City, February 21, 1882, sent the following letter and sonnet which were read at the banquet:
SONNET.Yes, home is sweet! and yet we needs must sigh, Restless until our longing souls have found Some realm beyond the fireside's narrow bound, Where slippered ease and sleepy comfort lie, Some fair ideal form that cannot die, By age dismantled and by change uncrowned, Else life creeps circling in the self-same round, And the low ceiling hides the lofty sky. Ah, then to thee our truant hearts return, Dear mother, Alma, Casta—spotless, kind! Thy sacred walls a larger home we find, And still for thee thy wandering children yearn, While with undying fires thine altars burn, Where all our holiest memories rest enshrined. POEM READ BY DOCTOR HOLMES AT THE WHITTIER |
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