FAVORITES OF SONG.
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 Two Armies, The Old Man's Dream,
Under the Violets, Dorothy Q._--but where shall we stop in the long
enumeration of popular favorites like these?
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,
But never yet could voice or string
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 published in the _Boston Medical and
Surgical Journal_ of January 7, 1875.
"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 caesura, 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 habitually
more slowly than Prior, and that Anacreon had a quicker respiration than
Homer. And this difference, which we conjecture from their rhythmical
instincts, if our conjecture is true, probably, almost certainly,
characterized all their vital movements."
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 possibility of rhythm or rhyme offers
itself actually or potentially to the clairvoyant perception
simultaneously with the thought it is to embody. Thus poetical
composition is the most intense, the most exciting, and therefore the
most exhausting of mental exercises. It is exciting because its mental
states are a series of revelations and surprises; intense on account of
the double strain upon the attention. The poet is not the same man who
seated himself an hour ago at his desk with the dust-cart and the
gutter, or the duck-pond and the hay-stack, and the barnyard fowls
beneath his window. He is in the forest with the song-birds; he is on
the mountain-top with the eagles. He sat down in rusty broadcloth, he is
arrayed in the imperial purple of his singing robes. Let him alone, now,
if you are wise, for you might as well have pushed the arm that was
finishing the smile of a Madonna, or laid a veil before a train that had
a queen on board, as thrust your untimely question on this
half-cataleptic child of the Muse, who hardly knows whether he is in the
body or out of the body. And do not wonder if, when the fit is over, he
is in some respects like one who is recovering after an excess of the
baser stimulants."
As a writer of humorous poetry, it is safe to say that Oliver Wendell
Holmes is without a peer.
_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?--
I must leave thee, lady sweet!
Months shall waste before we meet;
Winds are fair and sails are spread,
Anchors leave their ocean bed;
Ere this shining day grows dark,
Skies shall guide my shoreless bark;
Through thy tears, O lady mine,
Read thy lover's parting line.
When the first sad sun shall set,
Thou shalt tear thy locks of jet;
When the morning star shall rise
Thou shalt wake with weeping eyes;
When the second sun goes down
Thou more tranquil shalt be grown,
Taught too well that wild despair
Dims thine eyes, and spoils thy hair.
All the first unquiet week
Thou shalt wear a smileless cheek;
In the first month's second half
Thou shalt once attempt to laugh;
Then in _Pickwick_ thou shalt dip,
Lightly puckering round the lip,
Till at last, in sorrow's spite,
Samuel makes thee laugh outright.
While the first seven mornings last,
Round thy chamber bolted fast
Many a youth shall fume and pout,
"Hang the girl, she's always out!"
While the second week goes round,
Vainly shall they sing and pound;
When the third week shall begin,
"Martha, let the creature in!"
Now once more the flattering throng
Round thee flock with smile and song,
But thy lips unweaned as yet,
Lisp, "O, how can I forget!"
Men and devils both contrive
Traps for catching girls alive;
Eve was duped, and Helen kissed,
How, O how can you resist?
First, be careful of your fan,
Trust it not to youth or man;
Love has filled a pirate's sail
Often with its perfumed gale.
Mind your kerchief most of all,
Fingers touch when kerchiefs fall;
Shorter ell than mercers clip
Is the space from hand to lip.
Trust not such as talk in tropes
Full of pistols, daggers, ropes;
All the hemp that Russia bears
Scarce would answer lovers' prayers;
Never thread was spun so fine,
Never spider stretched the line,
Would not hold the lovers true
That would really swing for you.
Fiercely some shall storm and swear,
Beating breasts in black despair;
Others murmur with a sigh
You must melt or they will die;
Painted words on empty lies,
Grubs with wings like butterflies;
Let them die, and welcome, too;
Pray what better could they do?
Fare thee well, if years efface
From thy heart love's burning trace,
Keep, O keep that hallowed seat
From the tread of vulgar feet;
If the blue lips of the sea
Wait with icy kiss for me,
Let not thine forget that vow,
Sealed how often, love, as now!
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 presently his eyes filled
with tears, his thought slides into the minor key, and his heart is full
of sad and plaintive melodies. Or he goes to his work, saying--
"'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.
Dear Master, while we hear thy voice,
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:
DEAR BROTHERS ALUMNI:
As I am obliged to deny myself the pleasure of being with you, I do
not feel at liberty to ask many minutes of your time and attention.
I have compressed into the limits of a sonnet the feelings I am sure
we all share that, besides the roof that shelters us we have need of
some wider house where we can visit and find ourselves in a more
extended circle of sympathy than the narrow ring of a family, and
nowhere can we seek a truer and purer bond of fellowship than under
the benignant smile of our _Alma Mater_. Let me thank you for the
kindness which has signified to me that I should be welcome at your
festival.
In all the rewards of a literary life none is more precious than the
kindly recognition of those who have clung to the heart of the same
nursing mother, and will always flee to each other in the widest
distances of space, and let us hope in those unbounded realms in
which we may not utterly forget our earthly pilgrimage and its dear
companions.
Very sincerely yours,
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
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 CELEBRATION.
I believe that the copies of verses I've spun,
Like Scheherazade's tales, are a thousand and one,
You remember the story--those mornings in bed--
'Twas the turn of a copper--a tale or a head.
A doom like Scheherazade's falls upon me
In a mandate as stern as the Sultan's decree;
I'm a florist in verse, and what _would_ people say
If I came to a banquet without my bouquet?
It is trying, no doubt, when the company knows
Just the look and the smell of each lily and rose,
The green of each leaf in the sprigs that I bring,
And the shape of the bunch and the knot of the string.
Yes, 'the style is the man,' and the nib of one's pen
Makes the same mark at twenty, and threescore and ten;
It is so in all matters, if truth may be told;
Let one look at the cast he can tell you the mould.
How we all know each other! No use in disguise;
Through the holes in the mask comes the flash of the eyes;
We can tell by his--somewhat--each one of our tribe,
As we know the old hat which we cannot describe.
Though in Hebrew, in Sanscrit, in Choctaw, you write,
Sweet singer who gave us the Voices of Night,
Though in buskin or slipper your song may be shod,
Or the velvety verse that Evangeline trod.
We shall say, 'You can't cheat us--we know it is you--
There is one voice like that, but there cannot be two.
_Maestro_, whose chant like the dulcimer rings;
And the woods will be hushed when the nightingale sings.
And he, so serene, so majestic, so true,
Whose temple hypaethral the planets shine through,
Let us catch but five words from that mystical pen
We should know our one sage from all children of men.
And he whose bright image no distance can dim,
Through a hundred disguises we can't mistake him,
Whose play is all earnest, whose wit is the edge
(With a beetle behind) of a sham-splitting wedge.
Do you know whom we send you, Hidalgos of Spain?
Do you know your old friends when you see them again?
Hosea was Sancho! you Dons of Madrid,
But Sancho that wielded the lance of the Cid!
And the wood-thrush of Essex--you know whom I mean,
Whose song echoes round us when he sits unseen,
Whose heart-throbs of verse through our memories thrill
Like a breath from the wood, like a breeze from the hill.
So fervid, so simple, so loving, so pure,
We hear but one strain and our verdict is sure--
Thee cannot elude us--no further we search--
'Tis Holy George Herbert cut loose from his church!
We think it the voice of a cherub that sings--
Alas! we remember that angels have wings--
What story is this of the day of his birth?
Let him live to a hundred! we want him on earth!
One life has been paid him (in gold) by the sun;
One account has been squared and another begun;
But he never will die if he lingers below
Till we've paid him in love half the balance we owe!