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The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Author's Ed
The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes Author's Ed Author:Oliver Wendell Holmes General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1892 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: TO MY READERS. "VT AY, blame me not; I might have spared - Your patience many a trivial verse, Yet these my earlier welcome shared, So, let the better shield the worse. And some might say, " Those ruder songs Had freshness which the new have lost; To spring the opening leaf belongs, The chestnut-burs await the frost." When those I wrote, my locks were brown, When these I write -- ah, well-a-day ! The autumn thistle's silvery down Is not the purple bloom of May ! Go, little book, whose pages hold Those garnered years in loving trust; How long before your blue and gold Shall fade and whiten in the dust ? O sexton of the alcoved tomb, Where souls in leathern cerements lie, Tell me each living poet's doom ! How long before his book shall die ? It matters little, soon or late, A day, a month, a year, an age, -- I read oblivion in its date, And Finis on its title-page. Before we sighed, our griefs were told ; Before we smiled, our joys were sung And all our passions shaped of old In accents lost to mortal tongue. In vain a fresher mould we seek, -- Can all the varied phrases tell That Babel's wandering children speak How thrushes sing or lilacs smell? Caged in the poet's lonely heart, Love wastes unheard its tenderest tone; The soul that sings must dwell apart, Its inward melodies unknown. 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...« less