The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes Part 61

Brother, thy heart is troubled at my word; Sister, I see the cloud is on thy brow.

He will not blame me, He who sends not peace, But sends a sword, and bids us strike amain At Error's gilded crest, where in the van Of earth's great army, mingling with the best And bravest of its leaders, shouting loud The battle-cries that yesterday have led The host of Truth to victory, but to-day Are watchwords of the laggard and the slave, He leads his dazzled cohorts. G.o.d has made This world a strife of atoms and of spheres; With every breath I sigh myself away And take my tribute from the wandering wind To fan the flame of life's consuming fire; So, while my thought has life, it needs must burn, And, burning, set the stubble-fields ablaze, Where all the harvest long ago was reaped And safely garnered in the ancient barns.

But still the gleaners, groping for their food, Go blindly feeling through the close-shorn straw, While the young reapers flash, their glittering steel Where later suns have ripened n.o.bler grain!

X.

TRUTHS

THE time is racked with birth-pangs; every hour Brings forth some gasping truth, and truth newborn Looks a misshapen and untimely growth, The terror of the household and its shame, A monster coiling in its nurse's lap That some would strangle, some would only starve; But still it breathes, and pa.s.sed from hand to hand, And suckled at a hundred half-clad b.r.e.a.s.t.s, Comes slowly to its stature and its form, Calms the rough ridges of its dragon-scales, Changes to shining locks its snaky hair, And moves transfigured into angel guise, Welcomed by all that cursed its hour of birth, And folded in the same encircling arms That cast it like a serpent from their hold!

If thou wouldst live in honor, die in peace, Have the fine words the marble-workers learn To carve so well, upon thy funeral-stone, And earn a fair obituary, dressed In all the many-colored robes of praise, Be deafer than the adder to the cry Of that same foundling truth, until it grows To seemly favor, and at length has won The smiles of hard-mouthed men and light-lipped dames; Then s.n.a.t.c.h it from its meagre nurse's breast, Fold it in silk and give it food from gold; So shalt thou share its glory when at last It drops its mortal vesture, and, revealed In all the splendor of its heavenly form, Spreads on the startled air its mighty wings!

Alas! how much that seemed immortal truth That heroes fought for, martyrs died to save, Reveals its earth-born lineage, growing old And limping in its march, its wings unplumed, Its heavenly semblance faded like a dream!

Here in this painted casket, just unsealed, Lies what was once a breathing shape like thine, Once loved as thou art loved; there beamed the eyes That looked on Memphis in its hour of pride, That saw the walls of hundred-gated Thebes, And all the mirrored glories of the Nile.

See how they toiled that all-consuming time Might leave the frame immortal in its tomb; Filled it with fragrant balms and odorous gums That still diffuse their sweetness through the air, And wound and wound with patient fold on fold The flaxen bands thy hand has rudely torn!

Perchance thou yet canst see the faded stain Of the sad mourner's tear.

XI.

IDOLS

BUT what is this?

The sacred beetle, bound upon the breast Of the blind heathen! s.n.a.t.c.h the curious prize, Give it a place among thy treasured spoils, Fossil and relic,--corals, encrinites, The fly in amber and the fish in stone, The twisted circlet of Etruscan gold, Medal, intaglio, poniard, poison-ring,-- Place for the Memphian beetle with thine h.o.a.rd!

AM longer than thy creed has blest the world This toy, thus ravished from thy brother's breast, Was to the heart of Mizraim as divine, As holy, as the symbol that we lay On the still bosom of our white-robed dead, And raise above their dust that all may know Here sleeps an heir of glory. Loving friends, With tears of trembling faith and choking sobs, And prayers to those who judge of mortal deeds, Wrapped this poor image in the cerement's fold That Isis and Osiris, friends of man, Might know their own and claim the ransomed soul.

An idol? Man was born to worship such!

An idol is an image of his thought; Sometimes he carves it out of gleaming stone, And sometimes moulds it out of glittering gold, Or rounds it in a mighty frescoed dome, Or lifts it heavenward in a lofty spire, Or shapes it in a cunning frame of words, Or pays his priest to make it day by day; For sense must have its G.o.d as well as soul; A new-born Dian calls for silver shrines, And Egypt's holiest symbol is our own, The sign we worship as did they of old When Isis and Osiris ruled the world.

Let us be true to our most subtle selves, We long to have our idols like the rest.

Think! when the men of Israel had their G.o.d Encamped among them, talking with their chief, Leading them in the pillar of the cloud And watching o'er them in the shaft of fire, They still must have an image; still they longed For somewhat of substantial, solid form Whereon to hang their garlands, and to fix Their wandering thoughts and gain a stronger hold For their uncertain faith, not yet a.s.sured If those same meteors of the day and night Were not mere exhalations of the soil.

Are we less earthly than the chosen race?

Are we more neighbors of the living G.o.d Than they who gathered manna every morn, Reaping where none had sown, and heard the voice Of him who met the Highest in the mount, And brought them tables, graven with His hand?

Yet these must have their idol, brought their gold, That star-browed Apis might be G.o.d again; Yea, from their ears the women brake the rings That lent such splendors to the gypsy brown Of sunburnt cheeks,--what more could woman do To show her pious zeal? They went astray, But nature led them as it leads us all.

We too, who mock at Israel's golden calf And scoff at Egypt's sacred scarabee, Would have our amulets to clasp and kiss, And flood with rapturous tears, and bear with us To be our dear companions in the dust; Such magic works an image in our souls.

Man is an embryo; see at twenty years His bones, the columns that uphold his frame Not yet cemented, shaft and capital, Mere fragments of the temple incomplete.

At twoscore, threescore, is he then full grown?

Nay, still a child, and as the little maids Dress and undress their puppets, so he tries To dress a lifeless creed, as if it lived, And change its raiment when the world cries shame!

We smile to see our little ones at play So grave, so thoughtful, with maternal care Nursing the wisps of rags they call their babes;-- Does He not smile who sees us with the toys We call by sacred names, and idly feign To be what we have called them? He is still The Father of this helpless nursery-brood, Whose second childhood joins so close its first, That in the crowding, hurrying years between We scarce have trained our senses to their task Before the gathering mist has dimmed our eyes, And with our hollowed palm we help our ear, And trace with trembling hand our wrinkled names, And then begin to tell our stories o'er, And see--not hear--the whispering lips that say, "You know? Your father knew him.--This is he, Tottering and leaning on the hireling's arm,"-- And so, at length, disrobed of all that clad The simple life we share with weed and worm, Go to our cradles, naked as we came.

XII.

LOVE

WHAT if a soul redeemed, a spirit that loved While yet on earth and was beloved in turn, And still remembered every look and tone Of that dear earthly sister who was left Among the unwise virgins at the gate,-- Itself admitted with the bridegroom's train,-- What if this spirit redeemed, amid the host Of chanting angels, in some transient lull Of the eternal anthem, heard the cry Of its lost darling, whom in evil hour Some wilder pulse of nature led astray And left an outcast in a world of fire, Condemned to be the sport of cruel fiends, Sleepless, unpitying, masters of the skill To wring the maddest ecstasies of pain From worn-out souls that only ask to die,-- Would it not long to leave the bliss of heaven,-- Bearing a little water in its hand To moisten those poor lips that plead in vain With Him we call our Father? Or is all So changed in such as taste celestial joy They hear unmoved the endless wail of woe; The daughter in the same dear tones that hushed Her cradle slumbers; she who once had held A babe upon her bosom from its voice Hoa.r.s.e with its cry of anguish, yet the same?

No! not in ages when the Dreadful Bird Stamped his huge footprints, and the Fearful Beast Strode with the flesh about those fossil bones We build to mimic life with pygmy hands,-- Not in those earliest days when men ran wild And gashed each other with their knives of stone, When their low foreheads bulged in ridgy brows And their flat hands were callous in the palm With walking in the fashion of their sires, Grope as they might to find a cruel G.o.d To work their will on such as human wrath Had wrought its worst to torture, and had left With rage unsated, white and stark and cold, Could hate have shaped a demon more malign Than him the dead men mummied in their creed And taught their trembling children to adore!

Made in his image! Sweet and gracious souls Dear to my heart by nature's fondest names, Is not your memory still the precious mould That lends its form to Him who hears my prayer?

Thus only I behold Him, like to them, Long-suffering, gentle, ever slow to wrath, If wrath it be that only wounds to heal, Ready to meet the wanderer ere he reach The door he seeks, forgetful of his sin, Longing to clasp him in a father's arms, And seal his pardon with a pitying tear!

Four gospels tell their story to mankind, And none so full of soft, caressing words That bring the Maid of Bethlehem and her Babe Before our tear-dimmed eyes, as his who learned In the meek service of his gracious art The tones which, like the medicinal balms That calm the sufferer's anguish, soothe our souls.

Oh that the loving woman, she who sat So long a listener at her Master's feet, Had left us Mary's Gospel,--all she heard Too sweet, too subtle for the ear of man!

Mark how the tender-hearted mothers read The messages of love between the lines Of the same page that loads the bitter tongue Of him who deals in terror as his trade With threatening words of wrath that scorch like flame They tell of angels whispering round the bed Of the sweet infant smiling in its dream, Of lambs enfolded in the Shepherd's arms, Of Him who blessed the children; of the land Where crystal rivers feed unfading flowers, Of cities golden-paved with streets of pearl, Of the white robes the winged creatures wear, The crowns and harps from whose melodious strings One long, sweet anthem flows forevermore!

We too had human mothers, even as Thou, Whom we have learned to worship as remote From mortal kindred, wast a cradled babe.

The milk of woman filled our branching veins, She lulled us with her tender nursery-song, And folded round us her untiring arms, While the first unremembered twilight yeas Shaped us to conscious being; still we feel Her pulses in our own,--too faintly feel; Would that the heart of woman warmed our creeds!

Not from the sad-eyed hermit's lonely cell, Not from the conclave where the holy men Glare on each other, as with angry eyes They battle for G.o.d's glory and their own, Till, sick of wordy strife, a show of hands Fixes the faith of ages yet unborn,-- Ah, not from these the listening soul can hear The Father's voice that speaks itself divine!

Love must be still our Master; till we learn What he can teach us of a woman's heart, We know not His whose love embraces all.

EPILOGUE TO THE BREAKFAST-TABLE SERIES AUTOCRAT-PROFESSOR-POET

AT A BOOKSTORE

Anno Domini 1972

A CRAZY bookcase, placed before A low-price dealer's open door; Therein arrayed in broken rows A ragged crew of rhyme and prose, The homeless vagrants, waifs, and strays Whose low estate this line betrays (Set forth the lesser birds to lime) YOUR CHOICE AMONG THESE BOORS 1 DIME!

Ho! dealer; for its motto's sake This scarecrow from the shelf I take; Three starveling volumes bound in one, Its covers warping in the sun.

Methinks it hath a musty smell, I like its flavor none too well, But Yorick's brain was far from dull, Though Hamlet pah!'d, and dropped his skull.

Why, here comes rain! The sky grows dark,-- Was that the roll of thunder? Hark!

The shop affords a safe retreat, A chair extends its welcome seat, The tradesman has a civil look (I 've paid, impromptu, for my book), The clouds portend a sudden shower,-- I 'll read my purchase for an hour.

What have I rescued from the shelf?

A Boswell, writing out himself!

For though he changes dress and name, The man beneath is still the same, Laughing or sad, by fits and starts, One actor in a dozen parts, And whatsoe'er the mask may be, The voice a.s.sures us, This is he.

I say not this to cry him down; I find my Shakespeare in his clown, His rogues the selfsame parent own; Nay! Satan talks in Milton's tone!

Where'er the ocean inlet strays, The salt sea wave its source betrays; Where'er the queen of summer blows, She tells the zephyr, "I'm the rose!"

And his is not the playwright's page; His table does not ape the stage; What matter if the figures seen Are only shadows on a screen, He finds in them his lurking thought, And on their lips the words he sought, Like one who sits before the keys And plays a tune himself to please.

And was he noted in his day?

Read, flattered, honored? Who shall say?

Poor wreck of time the wave has cast To find a peaceful sh.o.r.e at last, Once glorying in thy gilded name And freighted deep with hopes of fame, Thy leaf is moistened with a tear, The first for many a long, long year.

For be it more or less of art That veils the lowliest human heart Where pa.s.sion throbs, where friendship glows, Where pity's tender tribute flows, Where love has lit its fragrant fire, And sorrow quenched its vain desire, For me the altar is divine, Its flame, its ashes,--all are mine!

And thou, my brother, as I look And see thee pictured in thy book, Thy years on every page confessed In shadows lengthening from the west, Thy glance that wanders, as it sought Some freshly opening flower of thought, Thy hopeful nature, light and free, I start to find myself in thee!