The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes Part 92

How blest is he who knows no meaner strife Than Art's long battle with the foes of life!

No doubt a.s.sails him, doing still his best, And trusting kindly Nature for the rest; No mocking conscience tears the thin disguise That wraps his breast, and tells him that he lies.

He comes: the languid sufferer lifts his head And smiles a welcome from his weary bed; He speaks: what music like the tones that tell, "Past is the hour of danger,--all is well!"

How can he feel the petty stings of grief Whose cheering presence always brings relief?

What ugly dreams can trouble his repose Who yields himself to soothe another's woes?

Hour after hour the busy day has found The good physician on his lonely round; Mansion and hovel, low and lofty door, He knows, his journeys every path explore,-- Where the cold blast has struck with deadly chill The st.u.r.dy dweller on the storm-swept hill, Where by the stagnant marsh the sickening gale Has blanched the poisoned tenants of the vale, Where crushed and maimed the bleeding victim lies, Where madness raves, where melancholy sighs, And where the solemn whisper tells too plain That all his science, all his art, were vain.

How sweet his fireside when the day is done And cares have vanished with the setting sun!

Evening at last its hour of respite brings And on his couch his weary length he flings.

Soft be thy pillow, servant of mankind, Lulled by an opiate Art could never find; Sweet be thy slumber,--thou hast earned it well,-- Pleasant thy dreams! Clang! goes the midnight bell!

Darkness and storm! the home is far away That waits his coming ere the break of day; The snow-clad pines their wintry plumage toss,-- Doubtful the frozen stream his road must cross; Deep lie the drifts, the slanted heaps have shut The hardy woodman in his mountain hut,-- Why should thy softer frame the tempest brave?

Hast thou no life, no health, to lose or save?

Look! read the answer in his patient eyes,-- For him no other voice when suffering cries; Deaf to the gale that all around him blows, A feeble whisper calls him,--and he goes.

Or seek the crowded city,--summer's heat Glares burning, blinding, in the narrow street, Still, noisome, deadly, sleeps the envenomed air, Unstirred the yellow flag that says "Beware!"

Tempt not thy fate,--one little moment's breath Bears on its viewless wing the seeds of death; Thou at whose door the gilded chariots stand, Whose dear-bought skill unclasps the miser's hand, Turn from thy fatal quest, nor cast away That life so precious; let a meaner prey Feed the destroyer's hunger; live to bless Those happier homes that need thy care no less!

Smiling he listens; has he then a charm Whose magic virtues peril can disarm?

No safeguard his; no amulet he wears, Too well he knows that Nature never spares Her truest servant, powerless to defend From her own weapons her unshrinking friend.

He dares the fate the bravest well might shun, Nor asks reward save only Heaven's "Well done!"

Such are the toils, the perils that he knows, Days without rest and nights without repose, Yet all unheeded for the love he bears His art, his kind, whose every grief he shares.

Harder than these to know how small the part Nature's proud empire yields to striving Art; How, as the tide that rolls around the sphere Laughs at the mounds that delving arms uprear,-- Spares some few roods of oozy earth, but still Wastes and rebuilds the planet at its will, Comes at its ordered season, night or noon, Led by the silver magnet of the moon,-- So life's vast tide forever comes and goes, Unchecked, resistless, as it ebbs and flows.

Hardest of all, when Art has done her best, To find the cuckoo brooding in her nest; The shrewd adventurer, fresh from parts unknown, Kills off the patients Science thought her own; Towns from a nostrum-vender get their name, Fences and walls the cure-all drug proclaim, Plasters and pads the willing world beguile, Fair Lydia greets us with astringent smile, Munchausen's fellow-countryman unlocks His new Pandora's globule-holding box, And as King George inquired, with puzzled grin, "How--how the devil get the apple in?"

So we ask how,--with wonder-opening eyes,-- Such pygmy pills can hold such giant lies!

Yes, sharp the trials, stern the daily tasks That suffering Nature from her servant asks; His the kind office dainty menials scorn, His path how hard,--at every step a thorn!

What does his saddening, restless slavery buy?

What save a right to live, a chance to die,-- To live companion of disease and pain, To die by poisoned shafts untimely slain?

Answer from h.o.a.ry eld, majestic shades,-- From Memphian courts, from Delphic colonnades, Speak in the tones that Persia's despot heard When nations treasured every golden word The wandering echoes wafted o'er the seas, From the far isle that held Hippocrates; And thou, best gift that Pergamus could send Imperial Rome, her n.o.blest Caesar's friend, Master of masters, whose unchallenged sway Not bold Vesalius dared to disobey; Ye who while prophets dreamed of dawning times Taught your rude lessons in Salerno's rhymes, And ye, the nearer sires, to whom we owe The better share of all the best we know, In every land an ever-growing train, Since wakening Science broke her rusted chain,-- Speak from the past, and say what prize was sent To crown the toiling years so freely spent!

List while they speak: In life's uneven road Our willing hands have eased our brothers' load; One forehead smoothed, one pang of torture less, One peaceful hour a sufferer's couch to bless, The smile brought back to fever's parching lips, The light restored to reason in eclipse, Life's treasure rescued like a burning brand s.n.a.t.c.hed from the dread destroyer's wasteful hand; Such were our simple records day by day, For gains like these we wore our lives away.

In toilsome paths our daily bread we sought, But bread from heaven attending angels brought; Pain was our teacher, speaking to the heart, Mother of pity, nurse of pitying art; Our lesson learned, we reached the peaceful sh.o.r.e Where the pale sufferer asks our aid no more,-- These gracious words our welcome, our reward Ye served your brothers; ye have served your Lord!

RHYMES OF A LIFE-TIME

FROM the first gleam of morning to the gray Of peaceful evening, lo, a life unrolled!

In woven pictures all its changes told, Its lights, its shadows, every flitting ray, Till the long curtain, falling, dims the day, Steals from the dial's disk the sunlight's gold, And all the graven hours grow dark and cold Where late the glowing blaze of noontide lay.

Ah! the warm blood runs wild in youthful veins,-- Let me no longer play with painted fire; New songs for new-born days! I would not tire The listening ears that wait for fresher strains In phrase new-moulded, new-forged rhythmic chains, With plaintive measures from a worn-out lyre.

August 2, 1881.

BEFORE THE CURFEW

AT MY FIRESIDE

ALONE, beneath the darkened sky, With saddened heart and unstrung lyre, I heap the spoils of years gone by, And leave them with a long-drawn sigh, Like drift-wood brands that glimmering lie, Before the ashes hide the fire.

Let not these slow declining days The rosy light of dawn outlast; Still round my lonely hearth it plays, And gilds the east with borrowed rays, While memory's mirrored sunset blaze Flames on the windows of the past.

March 1, 1888.

AT THE SAt.u.r.dAY CLUB THIS is our place of meeting; opposite That towered and pillared building: look at it; King's Chapel in the Second George's day, Rebellion stole its regal name away,-- Stone Chapel sounded better; but at last The poisoned name of our provincial past Had lost its ancient venom; then once more Stone Chapel was King's Chapel as before.

(So let rechristened North Street, when it can, Bring back the days of Marlborough and Queen Anne!) Next the old church your wandering eye will meet-- A granite pile that stares upon the street-- Our civic temple; slanderous tongues have said Its shape was modelled from St. Botolph's head, Lofty, but narrow; jealous pa.s.sers-by Say Boston always held her head too high.

Turn half-way round, and let your look survey The white facade that gleams across the way,-- The many-windowed building, tall and wide, The palace-inn that shows its northern side In grateful shadow when the sunbeams beat The granite wall in summer's scorching heat.

This is the place; whether its name you spell Tavern, or caravansera, or hotel.

Would I could steal its echoes! you should find Such store of vanished pleasures brought to mind Such feasts! the laughs of many a jocund hour That shook the mortar from King George's tower; Such guests! What famous names its record boasts, Whose owners wander in the mob of ghosts!

Such stories! Every beam and plank is filled With juicy wit the joyous talkers spilled, Ready to ooze, as once the mountain pine The floors are laid with oozed its turpentine!

A month had flitted since The Club had met; The day came round; I found the table set, The waiters lounging round the marble stairs, Empty as yet the double row of chairs.

I was a full half hour before the rest, Alone, the banquet-chamber's single guest.

So from the table's side a chair I took, And having neither company nor book To keep me waking, by degrees there crept A torpor over me,--in short, I slept.

Loosed from its chain, along the wreck-strown track Of the dead years my soul goes travelling back; My ghosts take on their robes of flesh; it seems Dreaming is life; nay, life less life than dreams, So real are the shapes that meet my eyes.

They bring no sense of wonder, no surprise, No hint of other than an earth-born source; All seems plain daylight, everything of course.

How dim the colors are, how poor and faint This palette of weak words with which I paint!

Here sit my friends; if I could fix them so As to my eyes they seem, my page would glow Like a queen's missal, warm as if the brush Of t.i.tian or Velasquez brought the flush Of life into their features. Ay de mi!

If syllables were pigments, you should see Such breathing portraitures as never man Found in the Pitti or the Vatican.

Here sits our POET, Laureate, if you will.

Long has he worn the wreath, and wears it still.

Dead? Nay, not so; and yet they say his bust Looks down on marbles covering royal dust, Kings by the Grace of G.o.d, or Nature's grace; Dead! No! Alive! I see him in his place, Full-featured, with the bloom that heaven denies Her children, pinched by cold New England skies, Too often, while the nursery's happier few Win from a summer cloud its roseate hue.

Kind, soft-voiced, gentle, in his eye there shines The ray serene that filled Evangeline's.

Modest he seems, not shy; content to wait Amid the noisy clamor of debate The looked-for moment when a peaceful word Smooths the rough ripples louder tongues have stirred.

In every tone I mark his tender grace And all his poems hinted in his face; What tranquil joy his friendly presence gives!

How could. I think him dead? He lives! He lives!

There, at the table's further end I see In his old place our Poet's vis-a-vis, The great PROFESSOR, strong, broad-shouldered, square, In life's rich noontide, joyous, debonair.

His social hour no leaden care alloys, His laugh rings loud and mirthful as a boy's,-- That l.u.s.ty laugh the Puritan forgot,-- What ear has heard it and remembers not?

How often, halting at some wide creva.s.se Amid the windings of his Alpine pa.s.s, High up the cliffs, the climbing mountaineer, Listening the far-off avalanche to hear, Silent, and leaning on his steel-shod staff, Has heard that cheery voice, that ringing laugh, From the rude cabin whose nomadic walls Creep with the moving glacier as it crawls How does vast Nature lead her living train In ordered sequence through that s.p.a.cious brain, As in the primal hour when Adam named The new-born tribes that young creation claimed!-- How will her realm be darkened, losing thee, Her darling, whom we call _our_ AGa.s.sIZ!