Born Aug. 29, 1809.
Our Autocrat.
John G. Whittier.
His laurels fresh from song and lay,
Romance and art, so young withal
At heart, we scarcely dare to say
We keep his seventieth festival.
His still the keen analysis
Of men and moods, electric wit,
Free play of mirth, and tenderness
To heal the slightest wound from it.
And his the pathos touching all
Life’s sins and sorrows and regrets,
Its hopes and fears, its final call
And rest beneath the violets.
His sparkling surface scarce betrays
The thoughtful tide beneath it rolled;
The wisdom of the latter days
And tender memories of the old.
Though now unnumbered guests surround
The table that he rules at will,
Its autocrat, however crowned,
Is but our friend and comrade still.
Long may he live to sing for us
The songs that stay the flight of time,
And like his Chambered Nautilus,
To holier heights of beauty climb.
Dec. 3, 1879.
I think that none of us can understand the meaning
and scope of Dr. Holmes’s writings unless we have observed
that the main work of his life has been to study
and teach an exact science, the noble science of anatomy.
And let us honor him to-day, not forgetting, as they can
never be forgotten, his poems, his essays, as a noble representative
of the profession of the scientific student and
teacher.—Charles W. Eliot.
What one does easily is apt to be his forte, though
years may pass before he finds this out. Holmes’s early
pieces, mostly college-verse, were better of their kind
than those of a better kind written in youth by some of
his contemporaries. The humbler the type, the sooner
the development. The young poet had the aid of a
suitable habitat; life at Harvard was the precise thing
to bring out his talent. There was nothing of the hermit-thrush
in him; his temper was not of the withdrawing
and reflective kind, nor moodily introspective,—it
throve on fellowship, and he looked to his mates for an
audience as readily as they to him for a toast-master.—Frances
H. Underwood.
One finds nowhere in Holmes’s volumes crude and
unformed thoughts. He writes as clearly as he thinks.
His sentences come from his pen clean-cut. The language
of his prose is pure classical English. His style
is simple, direct, forcible; affluent, in the sense that it
apparently never fails to come spontaneously at need,
and in the fittest form; but not exuberant to the obscuring
of the thought. Whether he be discussing a
medical thesis or reading a lyric to classmates and literary
friends at an anniversary dinner, or sketching character
in the romance, or playing the autocrat at the
breakfast-table, it is sure to be found acting effectively
on those who hear or read them.—Rev. Ray Palmer.
It is as a writer of humorous poetry that Holmes
excels. His non-humorous poems are full of beautiful
passages, as we shall see, but they have not the same
unique flavor of originality. In one of the great London
papers it was editorially stated, not long since, that
no contemporary American writer had so amused and instructed
the insular mind as Holmes had done. The
one most charming feature of his printed and spoken
conversation is that he establishes a relation of sympathy
between himself and his listeners, by expressing for
them those common, every-day thoughts that we all
think but rarely say.—Wm. Sloane Kennedy.
The grace and gayety, the pathos and melody, the
wit, the earnestness and shrewd sense of his writings,
have given Holmes a place, and a sunny place, in the
popular heart. On his happy birthday it was not Boston
that sat at table, but the whole country. It was not
a town meeting, but a national congress. The Autocrat
is not a mayor, but an emperor, and the toast of the
day was the toast of appreciative hearts and generous
souls far beyond the sound of the Atlantic. “The
Autocrat of the Breakfast-table; O king, live forever!”—Geo.
Wm. Curtis.
A Holmes Alphabet.
Along its front no sabers shine,
No blood-red pennons wave;
Its banner bears the single line,
“Our duty is to save.”
Bring bellows for the panting winds,
Hang up a lantern by the moon;
And give the nightingale a fife,
And lend the eagle a balloon.
The Meeting of the Dryads.
Child of the plowshare, smile;
Boy of the counter, grieve not,
Though muses round thy trundle-bed
Their broidered tissue weave not.
Dear friends, who are listening so sweetly the while
With your lips double-reefed in a snug little smile,
I leave you two fables, both drawn from the deep,—
The shells you can drop, but the pearls you may keep.
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?
Flowers will bloom over and over again in poems as
in the summer fields, to the end of time, always old
and always new. Why should we be more shy of repeating
ourselves than the spring be tired of blossoms
or the night of stars?—The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table.
God of all nations! Sovereign Lord!
In Thy dread name we draw the sword,
We lift the starry flag on high
That fills with light our stormy sky.
How patient Nature smiles at Fame!
The weeds that strewed the victor’s way,
Feed on his dust to shroud his name,
Green where his proudest towers decay.
It is likely that the language will shape itself by
larger forces than phonography and dictionary-making.
You may spade up the ocean as much as you like, and
harrow it afterward if you can, but the moon will still
lead the tides, and the winds will form their surface.—The
Professor at the Breakfast-table.
Joy smiles in the fountain,
Health flows in the rills,
As their ribbons of silver
Unwind from the hills.
Song for a Temperance Dinner.
Know old Cambridge? Hope you do.
Born there? Don’t say so! I was too.
Let each unhallowed cause that brings
The stern destroyer cease,
Thy flaming angel fold his wings
And seraphs whisper Peace!
Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another
mind than in the one where they sprang up.
That which was a weed in one intelligence becomes a
flower in the other. A flower, on the other hand, may
dwindle down to a mere weed by the same change.—The
Poet at the Breakfast-table.
None wept,—none pitied;—they who knelt
At morning by the despot’s throne
At evening dashed the laureled bust
And spurned the wreaths themselves had strewn.
Over the hill-sides the wild knell is tolling,
From their far hamlets the yeomanry come;
As through the storm-clouds the thunder-burst rolling,
Circles the beat of the mustering drum.
Poor conquered monarch! though that haughty glance
Still speaks thy courage unsubdued by time,
And in the grandeur of thy sullen tread
Lives the proud spirit of thy burning clime.
Questioning all things: Why her Lord had sent her?
What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her?
Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tormentor.
Rain me sweet odors on the air
And wheel me up my Indian chair,
And spread some book not overwise
Flat out before my sleepy eyes.
Scenes of my youth! awake, its slumbering fire!
Ye winds of Memory, sweep the silent lyre!
Ray of the past, if yet thou canst appear,
Break through the clouds of Fancy’s waning year.
Trees as we see them, love them, adore them in the
fields, where they are alive, holding their green sunshades
over our heads, talking to us with their hundred
thousand whispering tongues, looking down on us with
that sweet meekness which belongs to huge but limited
organisms.—The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table.
Unscathed, she treads the wreck-piled street
Whose narrow gaps afford
A pathway for her bleeding feet,
To seek her absent lord.
Virtue—the guide that men and nations own;
And Law—the bulwark that protects her throne;
And Health—to all its happiest charm that lends,—
These and their servants, man’s untiring friends.
Wan-visaged thing! thy virgin leaf
To me looks more than deadly pale,
Unknowing what may stain thee yet,—
A poem or a tale.
To a Blank Sheet of Paper.
“It ain’t jest the thing to grease your ex with ile o’
vitrul,” said the Member.—The Poet at the Breakfast-table.
Ye know not,—but the hour is nigh;
Ye will not heed the warning breath;
No vision strikes your clouded eye,
To break the sleep that wakes in death.
The Last Prophecy of Cassandra.
“By Zhorzhe!” as friend Sales is accustomed to cry,
You tell me they’re dead, but I know it’s a lie;
Is Jackson not President? What was’t you said?
It can’t be; you’re joking; what,—all of ’em dead?
Under the Washington Elm, Cambridge.
April 27, 1861.
Eighty years have passed, and more,
Since under the brave old tree
Our fathers gathered in arms, and swore
They would follow the sign their banners bore,
And fight till the land was free.
Half of their work was done,
Half is left to do,—
Cambridge, and Concord, and Lexington!
When the battle is fought and won,
What shall be told of you?
Hark!—’tis the south-wind moans,—
Who are the martyrs down?
Ah, the marrow was true in your children’s bones
That sprinkled with blood the cursèd stones
Of the murder-haunted town!
What if the storm-clouds blow?
What if the green leaves fall?
Better the crashing tempest’s throe
Than the army of worms that gnawed below;
Trample them one and all!
Then, when the battle is won,
And the land from traitors free,
Our children shall tell of the strife begun
When Liberty’s second April sun
Was bright on our brave old tree!
The Two Streams.
Behold the rocky wall
That down its sloping sides
Pours the swift rain-drops, blending, as they fall
In rushing river-tides!
Yon stream, whose sources run
Turned by a pebbled edge,
Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun
Through the cleft mountain-ledge.
The slender rill had strayed,
But for the slanting stone,
To evening’s ocean, with the tangled braid
Of foam-flecked Oregon.
So from the heights of Will
Life’s parting stream descends,
And, as a moment turns its slender rill,
Each widening torrent bends,—
From the same cradle’s side,
From the same mother’s knee,—
One to long darkness and the frozen tide,
One to the Peaceful Sea.
International Ode.
OUR FATHERS’ LAND.
Sung in unison by twelve hundred children of the public schools, at the
visit of the Prince of Wales to Boston, October 18, 1860. Air, “God save the
Queen.”
God bless our Fathers’ Land!
Keep her in heart and hand
One with our own!
From all her foes defend,
Be her brave People’s Friend,
On all her realms descend,
Protect her Throne!
Father, with loving care
Guard Thou her kingdom’s Heir,
Guide all his ways:
Thine arm his shelter be,
From him by land and sea
Bid storm and danger flee,
Prolong his days!
Lord, let War’s tempest cease,
Fold the whole Earth in peace
Under thy wings!
Make all Thy nations one,
All hearts beneath the sun,
Till thou shalt reign alone,
Great King of kings!
James Russell Lowell’s Birthday Festival.
We will not speak of years to-night,
For what have years to bring
But larger floods of love and light,
And sweeter songs to sing.
Enough for him the silent grasp
That knits us hand in hand,
And he the bracelet’s radiant clasp
That locks our circling band.
Strength to his hours of manly toil,
Peace to his starlit dreams!
Who loves alike the furrowed soil,
The music-haunted streams!
Sweet smiles to keep forever bright
The sunshine on his lips,
And faith that sees the ring of light
Round nature’s last eclipse.
