Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes Part 17

Roosa, Flint, Dana, Peabody, Ranney, Jacobi, Austin, and many others.

The first toast was as follows:

The hour's now come; The very minute bids thee ope thine ear Obey, and be attentive.

--_The Tempest._

After a few brief words of introduction, Doctor Barker called upon Doctor A.H. Smith to complete the greeting, which he did in the following happy lines:

You've heard of the deacon's one hoss shay Which, finished in Boston the self-same day That the City of Lisbon went to pot, Did a century's service, and then was not.

But the record's at fault which says that it burst Into simply a heap of amorphous dust, For after the wreck of that wonderful tub Out of the ruins they saved a hub; And the hub has since stood for Boston town, Hub of the universe, note that down.

But an orderly hub as all will own, Must have something central to turn upon, And, rubber-cushioned, and true and bright We have the axle here to-night.

Thrice welcome then to our festal board The doctor-poet, so doubly stored With science as well as with native wit, _Poeta nascitur_, you know, _non fit_, Skilled to dissect with knife or pen His subjects dead or living men; With thought sublime on every page To swell the veins with virtuous rage, Or with a syringe to inject them With sublimate to disinfect them; To show with demonstrator's art The complex chambers of the heart, Or armed with a diviner skill To make it pulsate at his will; With generous verse to celebrate The loaves and fishes of some giver; And then proceed to demonstrate The lobes and fissures of the liver; To soothe the pulses of the brain With poetry's enchanting strain.

Or to describe to cla.s.s uproarious _Pes hippocampi accessorious_; To nerve with fervor of appeal The sluggish muscles into steel, Or, pulling their attachments, show Whence they arise and where they go; To fire the eye by wit consummate, Or draw the aqueous humor from it; In times of peril give the tone To public feeling, called backbone, Or to discuss that question solemn, The muscles of the spinal column.

And now I close my artless ditty As per agreement with committee, And making place for those more able I leave the subject on the table.

The toast "Our Guest," was prefaced by the following quotation from Emerson:

"One would say here is a man with such an abundance of thought! He is never dull, never insincere, and has the genius to make the reader care for all that he cares for."

As Doctor Holmes rose, the room fairly shook with applause. Without any prefatory remarks, he then read the following poem:

Have I deserved your kindness? Nay, my friends; While the fair banquet its illusion lends, Let me believe it, though the blood may rush And to my cheek recall the maiden blush That o'er it flamed with momentary blaze When first I heard the honeyed words of praise; Let me believe it while the roses wear Their bloom unwithering in the heated air; Too soon, too soon their glowing leaves must fall, The laughing echoes leave the silent hall, Joy drop his garland, turn his empty cup, And weary labor take his burden up,-- How weigh that burden they can tell alone Whose dial marks no moment as their own.

Am I your creditor? Too well I know How Friendship pays the debt it does not owe, Shapes a poor semblance fondly to its mind, Adds all the virtues that it fails to find, Adorns with graces to its heart's content, Borrows from love what nature never lent, Till what with halo, jewels, gilding, paint, The veriest sinner deems himself a saint.

Thus while you pay these honors as my due, I owe my value's larger part to you; And in the tribute of the hour I see Not what I am, but what I ought to be.

Friends of the Muse, to you of right belong The first staid footsteps of my square-toed song; Full well I know the strong heroic line Has lost its fashion since I made it mine; But there are tricks old singers will not learn, And this grave measure still must serve my turn, So the old bird resumes the self-same note His first young summer wakened in his throat; The self-same tune the old canary sings, And all unchanged the bobolink's carol rings; When the tired songsters of the day are still, The thrush repeats his long-remembered trill; Age alters not the crow's persistent caw, The Yankee's "Haow," the stammering Briton's "Haw;"

And so the hand that takes the lyre for you Plays the old tune on strings that once were new, Nor let the rhymester of the hour deride The straight-backed measure with its stately stride; It gave the mighty voice of Dryden scope: It sheathed the steel-bright epigrams of Pope; In Goldsmith's verse it learned a sweeter strain, Byron and Campbell wore its clanking chain; I smile to listen while the critic's scorn Flouts the proud purple kings have n.o.bly worn; Bid each new rhymer try his dainty skill And mould his frozen phrases as he will; We thank the artist for his neat device-- The shape is pleasing though the stuff is ice.

Fashions will change--the new costume allures-- Unfading still the better type endures; While the slashed doublet of the cavalier Gave the old knight the pomp of chanticleer, Our last-hatched dandy with his gla.s.s and stick Recalls the semblance of a new-born chick (To match the model he is aiming at He ought to wear an eggsh.e.l.l for a hat), Which of these objects would a painter choose, And which Velasquez or Vand.y.k.e refuse?

When your kind summons reached my calm retreat, Who are the friends, I questioned, I shall meet?

Some in young manhood, shivering with desire To feel the genial warmth of Fortune's fire-- Each with his bellows ready in his hand To puff the flame just waiting to be fanned; Some heads half-silvered, some with snow-white hair; A crown ungarnished glistening here and there, The mimic moonlight gleaming on the scalps As evening's empress lights the shining Alps.

But count the crowds that throng your festal scenes-- How few that knew the century in its teens!

Save for the lingering handful fate befriends, Life's busy day the Sabbath decade ends; When that is over, how with what remains Of Nature's outfit--muscle, nerve and brains?

Were this a pulpit, I should doubtless preach; Were this a platform, I should gravely teach; But to no solemn duties I pretend In my vocation at the table's end, So as my answer let me tell instead What Landlord Porter--rest his soul--once said.

A feast it was that none might scorn to share; Cambridge and Concord demiG.o.ds were there-- And who were they? You know as well as I The stars long glittering in our Eastern sky-- The names that blazon our provincial scroll Ring round the world with Britain's drumbeat roll!

Good was the dinner, better was the talk; Some whispered, devious was the homeward walk; The story came from some reporting spy-- They lie, those fellows--Oh, how they do lie!

Not ours those foot tracks in the new fallen snow-- Poets and sages never zigzagged so!

Now Landlord Porter, grave, concise, severe, Master, nay, monarch, in his proper sphere, Though to belles-lettres he pretended not, Lived close to Harvard, so knew what was what; And having bards, philosophers and such To eat his dinner, put the finest touch His art could teach, those learned mouths to fill With the best proofs of gustatory skill; And finding wisdom plenty at his board, Wit, science, learning, all his guests had stored, By way of contrast, ventured to produce, To please their palates, an inviting goose.

Better it were the company should starve Than hands unskilled that goose attempt to carve; None but the master artist shall a.s.sail The bird that turns the mightiest surgeon pale.

One voice arises from the banquet hall,-- The landlord answers to the pleading call; Of stature tall, sublime of port he stands, His blade and trident gleaming in his hands; Beneath his glance the strong-knit joints relax As the weak knees before the headsman's axe.

And Landlord Porter lifts his glittering knife As some stout warrior armed for b.l.o.o.d.y strife; All eyes are on him; some in whispers ask-- What man is he who dares this dangerous task?

When, lo! the triumph of consummate art, With scarce a touch the creature drops apart!

As when the baby in his nurse's lap Spills on the carpet a dissected map.

Then the calm sage, the monarch of the lyre, Critics and men of science all admire, And one whose wisdom I will not impeach, Lively, not churlish, somewhat free of speech, Speaks thus: "Say, master, what of worth is left In birds like this, of breast and legs bereft?"

And Landlord Porter, with uplifted eyes, Smiles on the simple querist, and replies-- "When from a goose you've taken legs and breast, Wipe lips, thank G.o.d, and leave the poor the rest!"

Kind friends, sweet friends, I hold it hardly fair With that same bird your minstrel to compare, Yet in a certain likeness we agree-- No wrong to him, and no offence to me; I take him for the moral he has lent, My partner--to a limited extent.

When the stern landlord, whom we all obey, Has carved from life its seventh great slice away, Is the poor fragment left in blank collapse A pauper remnant of unvalued sc.r.a.ps?

I care not much what Solomon has said, Before his time to n.o.bler pleasures dead; Poor man! he needed half a hundred lives With such a babbling wilderness of wives!

But is there nothing that may well employ Life's winter months--no sunny hour of joy?

While o'er the fields the howling tempests rage, The prisoned linnet warbles in his cage; When chill November through the forest blows The greenhouse shelters the untroubled rose, Round the high trellis creeping tendrils twine, And the ripe cl.u.s.ters fill with blameless wine, We make the vine forget the winter's cold, But how shall age forget it's growing old?

Though doing right is better than deceit, Time is a trickster it is fair to cheat; The honest watches ticking in your fobs Tell every minute how the rascal robs.

To clip his forelock and his scythe to hide, To lay his hour-gla.s.s gently on its side, To slip the cards he marked upon the shelf, And deal him others you have marked yourself, If not a virtue, cannot be a sin, For the old rogue is sure at last to win.

What does he leave when life is well-nigh spent To lap its evening in a calm content?

Art, Letters, Science, these at least befriend Our day's brief remnant to its peaceful end-- Peaceful for him who shows the setting sun A record worthy of his Lord's "well done!"

When he, the Master whom I will not name, Known to our calling, not unknown to fame, At life's extremest verge half-conscious lay, Helpless and sightless, dying day by day,

His brain, so long with varied wisdom fraught, Filled with the broken enginery of thought, A flitting vision often would illume His darkened world and cheer its deepening gloom,-- A sunbeam struggling through the long eclipse,-- And smiles of pleasure play around his lips.

He loved the Art that shapes the dome and spire; The Roman's page, the ring of Byron's lyre, And oft, when fitful memory would return To find some fragment in her broken urn, Would wake to life some long-forgotten hour, And lead his thought to Pisa's terraced tower, Or trace in light before his rayless eye The dome-crowned Pantheon printed on the sky; Then while the view his ravished soul absorbs And lends a glitter to the sightless...o...b.., The patient watcher feels the stillness stirred By the faint murmur of some cla.s.sic word, Or the long roll of Harold's lofty rhyme, "Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime,"-- Such were the dreams that soothed his couch of pain, The sweet nepenthe of the worn-out brain.

Brothers in art, who live for others' needs In duty's bondage, mercy's gracious deeds, Of all who toil beneath the circling sun Whose evening rest than yours more fairly won?

Though many a cloud your struggling morn obscures, What sunset brings a brighter sky than yours?

I, who your labors for a while have shared, New tasks have sought, with new companions fared, For Nature's servant far too often seen A loiterer by the waves of Hippocrene; Yet round the earlier friendship twines the new; My footsteps wander, but my heart is true, Nor e'er forgets the living or the dead Who trod with me the paths where science led.

How can I tell you, O my loving friends, What light, what warmth, your joyous welcome lends To life's late hour? Alas! my song is sung, Its fading accents falter on my tongue.

Sweet friends, if shrinking in the banquet's blaze, Your blushing guest must face the breath of praise, Speak not too well of one who scarce will know Himself transfigured in its roseate glow; Say kindly of him what is--chiefly--true, Remembering always he belongs to you; Deal with him as a truant, if you will, But claim him, keep him, call him brother still!

The next toast was to "The Clergy."

He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one, exceeding wise, fair-spoken and persuading.

--_King Henry VIII._

Bishop Clark of Rhode Island responded. "We honor," he said, "the high priesthood of science and art. We honor the man who has brought life and joy to many weary dwellings, and therefore we extend the right hand of fellowship to him." When after tracing the lineage of the guest, he reviewed his life, quoted from his writings, and said in conclusion, that he stood side by side with Oliver Goldsmith.

The toast to "The Bar"--

Why might that not be the skull Of a lawyer? Where be his quidet's now?

--_Hamlet._

was answered by Hon. Wm. M. Evarts, in a witty and characteristic address.

Doctor T. Gaillard Thomas responded to the toast, "The Medical Profession"--

She honors herself in honoring a favorite son,--