Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes Part 7

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 l.u.s.ty 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 G.o.d 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 p.r.o.nunciation 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. _G.o.d save the King_, which has a compa.s.s of some half a dozen notes, and takes one expiration, economically used, to each line, may be referred to as the musical ill.u.s.tration.

"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 sh.o.r.eless 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 s.p.a.ce 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s in black despair; Others murmur with a sigh You must melt or they will die; Painted words on empty lies, Grubs with wings like b.u.t.terflies; 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 pa.s.s 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."