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Four American poets

Chapter 61: CHAPTER X “THE FAMOUS CLASS OF ’29”
By Sherwin Cody
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About This Book

Aimed at young readers, this compact collection presents four readable biographical sketches of notable poets, following childhood influences, schooling, early experiments in verse, and the circumstances behind key works. Each section pairs narrative anecdotes with explanations of themes such as nature, moral conviction, and public engagement, and includes episodes about professional life, honors, and later years. Organized into short chapters that highlight formative scenes, poetic methods, and memorable incidents, the book uses plain language and illustrative detail to make poetic craft and imagery accessible while encouraging appreciation of differing temperaments and literary approaches.

CHAPTER X
“THE FAMOUS CLASS OF ’29”

Holmes was the poet of the occasional, if ever there was one. If anybody held a meeting about anything, and Holmes was asked to read a poem, he kindly consented to do so. Who ever heard of opening a meeting of a medical society with a poem? Yet Holmes read an original poem at many a meeting of the Massachusetts Medical Society.

It was at the yearly meeting of “the famous class of ’29” that he read his poems oftenest. Every year for sixty years, this loyal poet remained true to class traditions. A poem from Holmes was always expected, and the class always got it.

A college class is a band of friends, friends who have passed the merriest years of their lives together. They come to college from the country over, from homes poor and rich, distant and near. For four years they live together, all on an equal footing, all together blooming into manhood. Then they scatter to their various duties in the world. One is a lawyer, another a journalist, another a clergyman, another a doctor, and others are business men. Yet how can they ever forget those happy years together?

Each year all those members of the class of ’29 who could do so would come together at Commencement time to renew old memories. Some of the class were perhaps over seas and in foreign lands; some, alas! were dead. So, as the years passed by, the number grew smaller and smaller, and the gathering became sadder and sadder; yet none of them would have missed it.

The first class poem in Holmes’s works is entitled “Bill and Joe,” and begins thus:

Come, dear old comrades, 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.

Most of these verses are of sad memories of happy times gone forever:

Where, oh, where are the visions of morning,
Fresh as the dews of our prime?
Gone, like the tenants that quit without warning,
Down the back entry of time.

But some are poems of dear friendship and pleasure at seeing friends again, like this, called “Indian Summer”:

You’ll believe me, dear boys, ’tis a pleasure to rise,
With a welcome like this in your darling old eyes;
To meet the same smiles and to hear the same tone
Which have greeted me oft in the years that have flown.

One poem entitled “The Boys” is well worth remembering, especially the last stanzas:

Then here’s to our boyhood, its gold and its gray!
The stars of its winter, the dews of its May!
And when we have done with our life-lasting toys,
Dear Father, take care of thy children, the Boys!

During the times of the great Civil War the poems were mostly of a patriotic kind. Here, for instance, is the way he opens his poem in 1862, entitled “The Good Ship Union”:

’Tis midnight: through my troubled dream
Loud wails the tempest’s cry;
Before the gale, with tattered sail,
A ship goes plunging by.
What name? Where bound?—The rocks around
Repeat the loud halloo.
—The good ship Union, Southward bound:
God help her and her crew!

In 1878 he wrote a poem on “The Last Survivor,” which opens with these beautiful lines:

Yes! the vacant chairs tell sadly we are going, going fast,
And the thought comes strangely o’er me, Who will live to be the last?

Let us add one more verse, a humorous verse in which the joker pretends he’s not so very old:

I don’t think I feel much older; I’m aware I’m rather gray;
But so are many young folks,—I meet ’em every day.
I confess I’m more particular in what I eat and drink,
But one’s taste improves with culture; that is all it means, I think.
Can you read as once you used to? Well, the printing is so bad,
No young folks’ eyes can read it like the books that once we had.
Are you quite as quick of hearing? Please to say that once again.
Don’t I use plain words, your Reverence? Yes, I often use a cane.
...
Ah, well,—I know—at every age life has a certain charm,—
You’re going? Come, permit me, please, I beg you’ll take my arm.
I take your arm! Why take your arm? I’d thank you to be told
I’m old enough to walk alone, but not so very old.

At last, in 1889, the poems stopped, because there were so few of the class left, and the meetings were so sad. In 1891, Holmes writes to a friend: “Our old raft of eighteen-twenty-niners is going to pieces; for the first time no class-meeting is called for the 8th of January. I shall try to get the poor remnant of the class together at my house; but it is doubtful whether there is life enough left for a gathering of half a dozen. I have a very tender feeling to my coevals.”