The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes Part 59

WHATEVER I do, and whatever I say, Aunt Tabitha tells me that is n't the way; When she was a girl (forty summers ago) Aunt Tabitha tells me they never did so.

Dear aunt! If I only would take her advice!

But I like my own way, and I find it so nice And besides, I forget half the things I am told; But they all will come back to me--when I am old.

If a youth pa.s.ses by, it may happen, no doubt, He may chance to look in as I chance to look out; She would never endure an impertinent stare,-- It is horrid, she says, and I must n't sit there.

A walk in the moonlight has pleasures, I own, But it is n't quite safe to be walking alone; So I take a lad's arm,--just for safety, you know,-- But Aunt Tabitha tells me they did n't do so.

How wicked we are, and how good they were then!

They kept at arm's length those detestable men; What an era of virtue she lived in!--But stay-- Were the men all such rogues in Aunt Tabitha's day?

If the men were so wicked, I 'll ask my papa How he dared to propose to my darling mamma; Was he like the rest of them? Goodness! Who knows?

And what shall I say, if a wretch should propose?

I am thinking if Aunt knew so little of sin, What a wonder Aunt Tabitha's aunt must have been!

And her grand-aunt--it scares me--how shockingly sad That we girls of to-day are so frightfully bad!

A martyr will save us, and nothing else can; Let me perish--to rescue some wretched young man!

Though when to the altar a victim I go, Aunt Tabitha 'll tell me she never did so.

WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS

FROM THE YOUNG ASTRONOMER'S POEM

I.

AMBITION

ANOTHER clouded night; the stars are hid, The orb that waits my search is hid with them.

Patience! Why grudge an hour, a month, a year, To plant my ladder and to gain the round That leads my footsteps to the heaven of fame, Where waits the wreath my sleepless midnights won?

Not the stained laurel such as heroes wear That withers when some stronger conqueror's heel Treads down their shrivelling trophies in the dust; But the fair garland whose undying green Not time can change, nor wrath of G.o.ds or men!

With quickened heart-beats I shall hear tongues That speak my praise; but better far the sense That in the unshaped ages, buried deep In the dark mines of unaccomplished time Yet to be stamped with morning's royal die And coined in golden days,--in those dim years I shall be reckoned with the undying dead, My name emblazoned on the fiery arch, Unfading till the stars themselves shall fade.

Then, as they call the roll of shining worlds, Sages of race unborn in accents new Shall count me with the Olympian ones of old, Whose glories kindle through the midnight sky Here glows the G.o.d of Battles; this recalls The Lord of Ocean, and yon far-off sphere The Sire of Him who gave his ancient name To the dim planet with the wondrous rings; Here flames the Queen of Beauty's silver lamp, And there the moon-girt orb of mighty Jove; But this, unseen through all earth's ions past, A youth who watched beneath the western star Sought in the darkness, found, and shewed to men; Linked with his name thenceforth and evermore So shall that name be syllabled anew In all the tongues of all the tribes of men: I that have been through immemorial years Dust in the dust of my forgotten time Shall live in accents shaped of blood-warm breath, Yea, rise in mortal semblance, newly born In shining stone, in undecaying bronze, And stand on high, and look serenely down On the new race that calls the earth its own.

Is this a cloud, that, blown athwart my soul, Wears a false seeming of the pearly stain Where worlds beyond the world their mingling rays Blend in soft white,--a cloud that, born of earth, Would cheat the soul that looks for light from heaven?

Must every coral-insect leave his sign On each poor grain he lent to build the reef, As Babel's builders stamped their sunburnt clay, Or deem his patient service all in vain?

What if another sit beneath the shade Of the broad elm I planted by the way,-- What if another heed the beacon light I set upon the rock that wrecked my keel,-- Have I not done my task and served my kind?

Nay, rather act thy part, unnamed, unknown, And let Fame blow her trumpet through the world With noisy wind to swell a fool's renown, Joined with some truth he stumbled blindly o'er, Or coupled with some single shining deed That in the great account of all his days Will stand alone upon the bankrupt sheet His pitying angel shows the clerk of Heaven.

The n.o.blest service comes from nameless hands, And the best servant does his work unseen.

Who found the seeds of fire and made them shoot, Fed by his breath, in buds and flowers of flame?

Who forged in roaring flames the ponderous stone, And shaped the moulded metal to his need?

Who gave the dragging car its rolling wheel, And tamed the steed that whirls its circling round?

All these have left their work and not their names,-- Why should I murmur at a fate like theirs?

This is the heavenly light; the pearly stain Was but a wind-cloud drifting o'er the stars!

II.

REGRETS

BRIEF glimpses of the bright celestial spheres, False lights, false shadows, vague, uncertain gleams, Pale vaporous mists, wan streaks of lurid flame, The climbing of the upward-sailing cloud, The sinking of the downward-falling star,-- All these are pictures of the changing moods Borne through the midnight stillness of my soul.

Here am I, bound upon this pillared rock, Prey to the vulture of a vast desire That feeds upon my life. I burst my bands And steal a moment's freedom from the beak, The clinging talons and the shadowing plumes; Then comes the false enchantress, with her song;

"Thou wouldst not lay thy forehead in the dust Like the base herd that feeds and breeds and dies Lo, the fair garlands that I weave for thee, Unchanging as the belt Orion wears, Bright as the jewels of the seven-starred Crown, The spangled stream of Berenice's hair!"

And so she twines the fetters with the flowers Around my yielding limbs, and the fierce bird Stoops to his quarry,--then to feed his rage Of ravening hunger I must drain my blood And let the dew-drenched, poison-breeding night Steal all the freshness from my fading cheek, And leave its shadows round my caverned eyes.

All for a line in some unheeded scroll; All for a stone that tells to gaping clowns, "Here lies a restless wretch beneath a clod Where squats the jealous nightmare men call Fame!"

I marvel not at him who scorns his kind And thinks not sadly of the time foretold When the old hulk we tread shall be a wreck, A slag, a cinder drifting through the sky Without its crew of fools! We live too long, And even so are not content to die, But load the mould that covers up our bones With stones that stand like beggars by the road And show death's grievous wound and ask for tears; Write our great books to teach men who we are, Sing our fine songs that tell in artful phrase The secrets of our lives, and plead and pray For alms of memory with the after time, Those few swift seasons while the earth shall wear Its leafy summers, ere its core grows cold And the moist life of all that breathes shall die; Or as the new-born seer, perchance more wise, Would have us deem, before its growing ma.s.s, Pelted with star-dust, stoned with meteor-b.a.l.l.s, Heats like a hammered anvil, till at last Man and his works and all that stirred itself Of its own motion, in the fiery glow Turns to a flaming vapor, and our orb Shines a new sun for earths that shall be born.

I am as old as Egypt to myself, Brother to them that squared the pyramids By the same stars I watch. I read the page Where every letter is a glittering world, With them who looked from Shinar's clay-built towers, Ere yet the wanderer of the Midland sea Had missed the fallen sister of the seven.

I dwell in s.p.a.ces vague, remote, unknown, Save to the silent few, who, leaving earth, Quit all communion with their living time.

I lose myself in that ethereal void, Till I have tired my wings and long to fill My breast with denser air, to stand, to walk With eyes not raised above my fellow-men.

Sick of my unwalled, solitary realm, I ask to change the myriad lifeless worlds I visit as mine own for one poor patch Of this dull spheroid and a little breath To shape in word or deed to serve my kind.

Was ever giant's dungeon dug so deep, Was ever tyrant's fetter forged so strong, Was e'er such deadly poison in the draught The false wife mingles for the trusting fool, As he whose willing victim is himself, Digs, forges, mingles, for his captive soul?

III.

SYMPATHIES

THE snows that glittered on the disk of Mars Have melted, and the planet's fiery orb Rolls in the crimson summer of its year; But what to me the summer or the snow Of worlds that throb with life in forms unknown, If life indeed be theirs; I heed not these.

My heart is simply human; all my care For them whose dust is fashioned like mine own; These ache with cold and hunger, live in pain, And shake with fear of worlds more full of woe; There may be others worthier of my love, But such I know not save through these I know.

There are two veils of language, hid beneath Whose sheltering folds, we dare to be ourselves; And not that other self which nods and smiles And babbles in our name; the one is Prayer, Lending its licensed freedom to the tongue That tells our sorrows and our sins to Heaven; The other, Verse, that throws its spangled web Around our naked speech and makes it bold.

I, whose best prayer is silence; sitting dumb In the great temple where I nightly serve Him who is throned in light, have dared to claim The poet's franchise, though I may not hope To wear his garland; hear me while I tell My story in such form as poets use, But breathed in fitful whispers, as the wind Sighs and then slumbers, wakes and sighs again.

Thou Vision, floating in the breathless air Between me and the fairest of the stars, I tell my lonely thoughts as unto thee.

Look not for marvels of the scholar's pen In my rude measure; I can only show A slender-margined, unillumined page, And trust its meaning to the flattering eye That reads it in the gracious light of love.

Ah, wouldst thou clothe thyself in breathing shape And nestle at my side, my voice should lend Whate'er my verse may lack of tender rhythm To make thee listen.

I have stood entranced When, with her fingers wandering o'er the keys, The white enchantress with the golden hair Breathed all her soul through some unvalued rhyme; Some flower of song that long had lost its bloom; Lo! its dead summer kindled as she sang!

The sweet contralto, like the ringdove's coo, Thrilled it with brooding, fond, caressing tones, And the pale minstrel's pa.s.sion lived again, Tearful and trembling as a dewy rose The wind has shaken till it fills the air With light and fragrance. Such the wondrous charm A song can borrow when the bosom throbs That lends it breath.

So from the poet's lips His verse sounds doubly sweet, for none like him Feels every cadence of its wave-like flow; He lives the pa.s.sion over, while he reads, That shook him as he sang his lofty strain, And pours his life through each resounding line, As ocean, when the stormy winds are hushed, Still rolls and thunders through his billowy caves.

IV.

MASTER AND SCHOLAR