The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes Part 106

What shouts of thronging mult.i.tudes ascend!

If this is life,--to mark with every hour The purple deepening in his robes of power, To see the painted fruits of honor fall Thick at his feet, and choose among them all, To hear the sounds that shape his spreading name Peal through the myriad organ-stops of fame, Stamp the lone isle that spots the seaman's chart, And crown the pillared glory of the mart, To count as peers the few supremely wise Who mark their planet in the angels' eyes,-- If this is life-- What savage man is he Who strides alone beside the sounding sea?

Alone he wanders by the murmuring sh.o.r.e, His thoughts as restless as the waves that roar; Looks on the sullen sky as stormy-browed As on the waves yon tempest-brooding cloud, Heaves from his aching breast a wailing sigh, Sad as the gust that sweeps the clouded sky.

Ask him his griefs; what midnight demons plough The lines of torture on his lofty brow; Unlock those marble lips, and bid them speak The mystery freezing in his bloodless cheek.

His secret? Hid beneath a flimsy word; One foolish whisper that ambition heard; And thus it spake: "Behold yon gilded chair, The world's one vacant throne,--thy plate is there!"

Ah, fatal dream! What warning spectres meet In ghastly circle round its shadowy seat!

Yet still the Tempter murmurs in his ear The maddening taunt he cannot choose but hear "Meanest of slaves, by G.o.ds and men accurst, He who is second when he might be first Climb with bold front the ladder's topmost round, Or chain thy creeping footsteps to the ground!"

Ill.u.s.trious Dupe! Have those majestic eyes Lost their proud fire for such a vulgar prize?

Art thou the last of all mankind to know That party-fights are won by aiming low?

Thou, stamped by Nature with her royal sign, That party-hirelings hate a look like thine?

Shake from thy sense the wild delusive dream Without the purple, art thou not supreme?

And soothed by love unbought, thy heart shall own A nation's homage n.o.bler than its throne!

Loud rang the plaudits; with them rose the thought, "Would he had learned the lesson he has taught!"

Used to the tributes of the noisy crowd, The stately speaker calmly smiled and bowed; The fire within a flushing cheek betrayed, And eyes that burned beneath their penthouse shade.

"The clock strikes ten, the hours are flying fast,-- Now, Number Five, we've kept you till the last!"

What music charms like those caressing tones Whose magic influence every listener owns,-- Where all the woman finds herself expressed, And Heaven's divinest effluence breathes confessed?

Such was the breath that wooed our ravished ears, Sweet as the voice a dreaming vestal hears; Soft as the murmur of a brooding dove, It told the mystery of a mother's love.

THE MOTHER'S SECRET

How sweet the sacred legend--if unblamed In my slight verse such holy things are named-- Of Mary's secret hours of hidden joy, Silent, but pondering on her wondrous boy!

Ave, Maria! Pardon, if I wrong Those heavenly words that shame my earthly song!

The choral host had closed the Angel's strain Sung to the listening watch on Bethlehem's plain, And now the shepherds, hastening on their way, Sought the still hamlet where the Infant lay.

They pa.s.sed the fields that gleaning Ruth toiled o'er,-- They saw afar the ruined threshing-floor Where Moab's daughter, homeless and forlorn, Found Boaz slumbering by his heaps of corn; And some remembered how the holy scribe, Skilled in the lore of every jealous tribe, Traced the warm blood of Jesse's royal son To that fair alien, bravely wooed and won.

So fared they on to seek the promised sign, That marked the anointed heir of David's line.

At last, by forms of earthly semblance led, They found the crowded inn, the oxen's shed.

No pomp was there, no glory shone around On the coa.r.s.e straw that strewed the reeking ground; One dim retreat a flickering torch betrayed,-- In that poor cell the Lord of Life was laid The wondering shepherds told their breathless tale Of the bright choir that woke the sleeping vale; Told how the skies with sudden glory flamed, Told how the shining mult.i.tude proclaimed, "Joy, joy to earth! Behold the hallowed morn In David's city Christ the Lord is born!

'Glory to G.o.d!' let angels shout on high, 'Good-will to men!' the listening earth reply!"

They spoke with hurried words and accents wild; Calm in his cradle slept the heavenly child.

No trembling word the mother's joy revealed,-- One sigh of rapture, and her lips were sealed; Unmoved she saw the rustic train depart, But kept their words to ponder in her heart.

Twelve years had pa.s.sed; the boy was fair and tall, Growing in wisdom, finding grace with all.

The maids of Nazareth, as they trooped to fill Their balanced urns beside the mountain rill, The gathered matrons, as they sat and spun, Spoke in soft words of Joseph's quiet son.

No voice had reached the Galilean vale Of star-led kings, or awe-struck shepherd's tale; In the meek, studious child they only saw The future Rabbi, learned in Israel's law.

Beyond the hills that girt the village green; Save when at midnight, o'er the starlit sands, s.n.a.t.c.hed from the steel of Herod's murdering bands, A babe, close folded to his mother's breast, Through Edom's wilds he sought the sheltering West.

Then Joseph spake: "Thy boy hath largely grown; Weave him fine raiment, fitting to be shown; Fair robes beseem the pilgrim, as the priest; Goes he not with us to the holy feast?"

And Mary culled the flaxen fibres white; Till eve she spun; she spun till morning light.

The thread was twined; its parting meshes through From hand to hand her restless shuttle flew, Till the full web was wound upon the beam; Love's curious toil,--a vest without a seam!

They reach the Holy Place, fulfil the days To solemn feasting given, and grateful praise.

At last they turn, and far Moriah's height Melts in the southern sky and fades from sight.

All day the dusky caravan has flowed In devious trails along the winding road; (For many a step their homeward path attends, And all the sons of Abraham are as friends.) Evening has come,--the hour of rest and joy,-- Hush! Hush! That whisper,--"Where is Mary's boy?"

Oh, weary hour! Oh, aching days that pa.s.sed Filled with strange fears each wilder than the last,-- The soldier's lance, the fierce centurion's sword, The crushing wheels that whirl some Roman lord, The midnight crypt that sucks the captive's breath, The blistering sun on Hinnom's vale of death!

Thrice on his cheek had rained the morning light; Thrice on his lips the mildewed kiss of night, Crouched by a sheltering column's shining plinth, Or stretched beneath the odorous terebinth.

At last, in desperate mood, they sought once more The Temple's porches, searched in vain before; They found him seated with the ancient men,-- The grim old rufflers of the tongue and pen,-- Their bald heads glistening as they cl.u.s.tered near, Their gray beards slanting as they turned to hear, Lost in half-envious wonder and surprise That lips so fresh should utter words so wise.

And Mary said,--as one who, tried too long, Tells all her grief and half her sense of wrong,-- What is this thoughtless thing which thou hast done?

Lo, we have sought thee sorrowing, O my son!

Few words he spake, and scarce of filial tone, Strange words, their sense a mystery yet unknown; Then turned with them and left the holy hill, To all their mild commands obedient still.

The tale was told to Nazareth's sober men, And Nazareth's matrons told it oft again; The maids retold it at the fountain's side, The youthful shepherds doubted or denied; It pa.s.sed around among the listening friends, With all that fancy adds and fiction lends, Till newer marvels dimmed the young renown Of Joseph's son, who talked the Rabbis down.

But Mary, faithful to its lightest word, Kept in her heart the sayings she had heard, Till the dread morning rent the Temple's veil, And shuddering earth confirmed the wondrous tale.

Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall A mother's secret hope outlives them all.

Hushed was the voice, but still its accents thrilled The throbbing hearts its lingering sweetness filled.

The simple story which a tear repays Asks not to share the noisy breath of praise.

A trance-like stillness,--scarce a whisper heard, No tinkling teaspoon in its saucer stirred; A deep-drawn sigh that would not be suppressed, A sob, a lifted kerchief told the rest.

"Come now, Dictator," so the lady spoke, "You too must fit your shoulder to the yoke; You'll find there's something, doubtless, if you look, To serve your purpose,--so, now take the book."

"Ah, my dear lady, you must know full well, 'Story, G.o.d bless you, I have none to tell.'

To those five stories which these pages hold You all have listened,--every one is told.

There's nothing left to make you smile or weep,-- A few grave thoughts may work you off to sleep."

THE SECRET OF THE STARS

Is man's the only throbbing heart that hides The silent spring that feeds its whispering tides?

Speak from thy caverns, mystery-breeding Earth, Tell the half-hinted story of thy birth, And calm the noisy champions who have thrown The book of types against the book of stone!

Have ye not secrets, ye refulgent spheres, No sleepless listener of the starlight hears?

In vain the sweeping equatorial pries Through every world-sown corner of the skies, To the far orb that so remotely strays Our midnight darkness is its noonday blaze; In vain the climbing soul of creeping man Metes out the heavenly concave with a span, Tracks into s.p.a.ce the long-lost meteor's trail, And weighs an unseen planet in the scale; Still o'er their doubts the wan-eyed watchers sigh, And Science lifts her still unanswered cry "Are all these worlds, that speed their circling flight, Dumb, vacant, soulless,--baubles of the night?

Warmed with G.o.d's smile and wafted by his breath, To weave in ceaseless round the dance of Death?

Or rolls a sphere in each expanding zone, Crowned with a life as varied as our own?"

Maker of earth and stars! If thou hast taught By what thy voice hath spoke, thy hand hath wrought, By all that Science proves, or guesses true, More than thy poet dreamed, thy prophet knew,-- The heavens still bow in darkness at thy feet, And shadows veil thy cloud-pavilioned seat!

Not for ourselves we ask thee to reveal One awful word beneath the future's seal; What thou shalt tell us, grant us strength to bear; What thou withholdest is thy single care.

Not for ourselves; the present clings too fast, Moored to the mighty anchors of the past; But when, with angry snap, some cable parts, The sound re-echoing in our startled hearts,-- When, through the wall that clasps the harbor round, And shuts the raving ocean from its bound, Shattered and rent by sacrilegious hands, The first mad billow leaps upon the sands,-- Then to the Future's awful page we turn, And what we question hardly dare to learn.

Still let us hope! for while we seem to tread The time-worn pathway of the nations dead, Though Sparta laughs at all our warlike deeds, And buried Athens claims our stolen creeds, Though Rome, a spectre on her broken throne, Beholds our eagle and recalls her own, Though England fling her pennons on the breeze And reign before us Mistress of the seas,-- While calm-eyed History tracks us circling round Fate's iron pillar where they all were bound, Still in our path a larger curve she finds, The spiral widening as the chain unwinds Still sees new beacons crowned with brighter flame Than the old watch-fires, like, but not the same No shameless haste shall spot with bandit-crime Our destined empire s.n.a.t.c.hed before its time.

Wait,--wait, undoubting, for the winds have caught From our bold speech the heritage of thought; No marble form that sculptured truth can wear Vies with the image shaped in viewless air; And thought unfettered grows through speech to deeds, As the broad forest marches in its seeds.

What though we perish ere the day is won?

Enough to see its glorious work begun!

The thistle falls before a trampling clown, But who can chain the flying thistle-down?

Wait while the fiery seeds of freedom fly, The prairie blazes when the gra.s.s is dry!

What arms might ravish, leave to peaceful arts, Wisdom and love shall win the roughest hearts; So shall the angel who has closed for man The blissful garden since his woes began Swing wide the golden portals of the West, And Eden's secret stand at length confessed!

The reader paused; in truth he thought it time,-- Some threatening signs accused the drowsy rhyme.

The Mistress nodded, the Professor dozed, The two Annexes sat with eyelids closed,-- Not sleeping,--no! But when one shuts one's eyes, That one hears better no one, sure, denies.

The Doctor whispered in Delilah's ear, Or seemed to whisper, for their heads drew near.