The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes Part 95

BOSTON TO FLORENCE

Sent to "The Philological Circle" of Florence for its meeting in commemoration of Dante, January 27, 1881, the anniversary of his first condemnation.

PROUD of her cl.u.s.tering spires, her new-built towers, Our Venice, stolen from the slumbering sea, A sister's kindliest greeting wafts to thee, Rose of Val d' Arno, queen of all its flowers!

Thine exile's shrine thy sorrowing love embowers, Yet none with truer homage bends the knee, Or stronger pledge of fealty brings, than we, Whose poets make thy dead Immortal ours.

Lonely the height, but ah, to heaven how near!

Dante, whence flowed that solemn verse of thine Like the stern river from its Apennine Whose name the far-off Scythian thrilled with fear: Now to all lands thy deep-toned voice is dear, And every language knows the Song Divine!

AT THE UNITARIAN FESTIVAL

MARCH 8, 1882

THE waves unbuild the wasting sh.o.r.e; Where mountains towered the billows sweep, Yet still their borrowed spoils restore, And build new empires from the deep.

So while the floods of thought lay waste The proud domain of priestly creeds, Its heaven-appointed tides will haste To plant new homes for human needs.

Be ours to mark with hearts unchilled The change an outworn church deplores; The legend sinks, but Faith shall build A fairer throne on new-found sh.o.r.es.

POEM

FOR THE TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDING OF HARVARD COLLEGE

TWICE had the mellowing sun of autumn crowned The hundredth circle of his yearly round, When, as we meet to-day, our fathers met: That joyous gathering who can e'er forget, When Harvard's nurslings, scattered far and wide, Through mart and village, lake's and ocean's side, Came, with one impulse, one fraternal throng, And crowned the hours with banquet, speech, and song?

Once more revived in fancy's magic gla.s.s, I see in state the long procession pa.s.s Tall, courtly, leader as by right divine, Winthrop, our Winthrop, rules the marshalled line, Still seen in front, as on that far-off day His ribboned baton showed the column's way.

Not all are gone who marched in manly pride And waved their truncheons at their leader's side; Gray, Lowell, Dixwell, who his empire shared, These to be with us envious Time has spared.

Few are the faces, so familiar then, Our eyes still meet amid the haunts of men; Scarce one of all the living gathered there, Whose unthinned locks betrayed a silver hair, Greets us to-day, and yet we seem the same As our own sires and grandsires, save in name.

There are the patriarchs, looking vaguely round For cla.s.smates' faces, hardly known if found; See the cold brow that rules the busy mart; Close at its side the pallid son of art, Whose purchased skill with borrowed meaning clothes, And stolen hues, the smirking face he loathes.

Here is the patient scholar; in his looks You read the t.i.tles of his learned books; What cla.s.sic lore those spidery crow's-feet speak!

What problems figure on that wrinkled cheek!

For never thought but left its stiffened trace, Its fossil footprint, on the plastic face, As the swift record of a raindrop stands, Fixed on the tablet of the hardening sands.

On every face as on the written page Each year renews the autograph of age; One trait alone may wasting years defy,-- The fire still lingering in the poet's eye, While Hope, the siren, sings her sweetest strain,-- _Non omnis moriar_ is its proud refrain.

Sadly we gaze upon the vacant chair; He who should claim its honors is not there,-- Otis, whose lips the listening crowd enthrall That press and pack the floor of Boston's hall.

But Kirkland smiles, released from toil and care Since the silk mantle younger shoulders wear,-- Quincy's, whose spirit breathes the selfsame fire That filled the bosom of his youthful sire, Who for the altar bore the kindled torch To freedom's temple, dying in its porch.

Three grave professions in their sons appear, Whose words well studied all well pleased will hear Palfrey, ordained in varied walks to shine, Statesman, historian, critic, and divine; Solid and square behold majestic Shaw, A ma.s.s of wisdom and a mine of law; Warren, whose arm the doughtiest warriors fear, Asks of the startled crowd to lend its ear,-- Proud of his calling, him the world loves best, Not as the coming, but the parting guest.

Look on that form,--with eye dilating scan The stately mould of nature's kingliest man!

Tower-like he stands in life's unfaded prime; Ask you his name? None asks a second time He from the land his outward semblance takes, Where storm-swept mountains watch o'er slumbering lakes.

See in the impress which the body wears How its imperial might the soul declares The forehead's large expansion, lofty, wide, That locks unsilvered vainly strive to hide; The lines of thought that plough the sober cheek; Lips that betray their wisdom ere they speak In tones like answers from Dodona's grove; An eye like Juno's when she frowns on Jove.

I look and wonder; will he be content-- This man, this monarch, for the purple meant-- The meaner duties of his tribe to share, Clad in the garb that common mortals wear?

Ah, wild Ambition, spread thy restless wings, Beneath whose plumes the hidden cestrum stings;

Thou whose bold flight would leave earth's vulgar crowds, And like the eagle soar above the clouds, Must feel the pang that fallen angels know When the red lightning strikes thee from below!

Less bronze, more silver, mingles in the mould Of him whom next my roving eyes behold; His, more the scholar's than the statesman's face, Proclaims him born of academic race.

Weary his look, as if an aching brain Left on his brow the frozen prints of pain; His voice far-reaching, grave, sonorous, owns A shade of sadness in its plaintive tones, Yet when its breath some loftier thought inspires Glows with a heat that every bosom fires.

Such Everett seems; no chance-sown wild flower knows The full-blown charms of culture's double rose,-- Alas, how soon, by death's unsparing frost, Its bloom is faded and its fragrance lost!

Two voices, only two, to earth belong, Of all whose accents met the listening throng: Winthrop, alike for speech and guidance framed, On that proud day a twofold duty claimed; One other yet,--remembered or forgot,-- Forgive my silence if I name him not.

Can I believe it? I, whose youthful voice Claimed a brief gamut,--notes not over choice, Stood undismayed before the solemn throng, And _propria voce_ sung that saucy song Which even in memory turns my soul aghast,-- _Felix audacia_ was the verdict cast.

What were the glory of these festal days Shorn of their grand illumination's blaze?

Night comes at last with all her starry train To find a light in every glittering pane.

From "Harvard's" windows see the sudden flash,-- Old "Ma.s.sachusetts" glares through every sash; From wall to wall the kindling splendors run Till all is glorious as the noonday sun.

How to the scholar's mind each object brings What some historian tells, some poet sings!

The good gray teacher whom we all revered-- Loved, honored, laughed at, and by freshmen feared, As from old "Harvard," where its light began, From hall to hall the cl.u.s.tering splendors ran-- Took down his well-worn Eschylus and read, Lit by the rays a thousand tapers shed, How the swift herald crossed the leagues between Mycenae's monarch and his faithless queen; And thus he read,--my verse but ill displays The Attic picture, clad in modern phrase.

On Ida's summit flames the kindling pile, And Lemnos answers from his rocky isle; From Athos next it climbs the reddening skies, Thence where the watch-towers of Macistus rise.

The sentries of Mesapius in their turn Bid the dry heath in high piled ma.s.ses burn, Cith.o.e.ron's crag the crimson billows stain, Far AEgiplanctus joins the fiery train.

Thus the swift courier through the pathless night Has gained at length the Arachnoean height, Whence the glad tidings, borne on wings offlame, "Ilium has fallen!" reach the royal dame.

So ends the day; before the midnight stroke The lights expiring cloud the air with smoke; While these the toil of younger hands employ, The slumbering Grecian dreams of smouldering Troy.

As to that hour with backward steps I turn, Midway I pause; behold a funeral urn!

Ah, sad memorial! known but all too well The tale which thus its golden letters tell:

This dust, once breathing, changed its joyous life For toil and hunger, wounds and mortal strife; Love, friendship, learning's all prevailing charms, For the cold bivouac and the clash of arms.

The cause of freedom won, a race enslaved Called back to manhood, and a nation saved, These sons of Harvard, falling ere their prime, Leave their proud memory to the coming time.

While in their still retreats our scholars turn The mildewed pages of the past, to learn With endless labor of the sleepless brain What once has been and ne'er shall be again, We reap the harvest of their ceaseless toil And find a fragrance in their midnight oil.

But let a purblind mortal dare the task The embryo future of itself to ask, The world reminds him, with a scornful laugh, That times have changed since Prospero broke his staff.

Could all the wisdom of the schools foretell The dismal hour when Lisbon shook and fell, Or name the shuddering night that toppled down Our sister's pride, beneath whose mural crown Scarce had the scowl forgot its angry lines, When earth's blind prisoners fired their fatal mines?

New realms, new worlds, exulting Science claims, Still the dim future unexplored remains; Her trembling scales the far-off planet weigh, Her torturing prisms its elements betray,-- We know what ores the fires of Sirius melt, What vaporous metals gild Orion's belt; Angels, archangels, may have yet to learn Those hidden truths our heaven-taught eyes discern; Yet vain is Knowledge, with her mystic wand, To pierce the cloudy screen and read beyond; Once to the silent stars the fates were known, To us they tell no secrets but their own.

At Israel's altar still we humbly bow, But where, oh where, are Israel's prophets now?

Where is the sibyl with her h.o.a.rded leaves?

Where is the charm the weird enchantress weaves?

No croaking raven turns the auspex pale, No reeking altars tell the morrow's tale; The measured footsteps of the Fates are dumb, Unseen, unheard, unheralded, they come, Prophet and priest and all their following fail.

Who then is left to rend the future's veil?

Who but the poet, he whose nicer sense No film can baffle with its slight defence, Whose finer vision marks the waves that stray, Felt, but unseen, beyond the violet ray?-- Who, while the storm-wind waits its darkening shroud, Foretells the tempest ere he sees the cloud,-- Stays not for time his secrets to reveal, But reads his message ere he breaks the seal.

So Mantua's bard foretold the coming day Ere Bethlehem's infant in the manger lay; The promise trusted to a mortal tongue Found listening ears before the angels sung.

So while his load the creeping pack-horse galled, While inch by inch the dull ca.n.a.l-boat crawled, Darwin beheld a t.i.tan from "afar Drag the slow barge or drive the rapid car,"

That panting giant fed by air and flame, The mightiest forges task their strength to tame.

Happy the poet! him no tyrant fact Holds in its clutches to be chained and racked; Him shall no mouldy doc.u.ment convict, No stern statistics gravely contradict; No rival sceptre threats his airy throne; He rules o'er shadows, but he reigns alone.

Shall I the poet's broad dominion claim Because you bid me wear his sacred name For these few moments? Shall I boldly clash My flint and steel, and by the sudden flash Read the fair vision which my soul descries Through the wide pupils of its wondering eyes?

List then awhile; the fifty years have sped; The third full century's opened scroll is spread, Blank to all eyes save his who dimly sees The shadowy future told in words like these.