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    The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Volume 06 Poems from the Breakfast Table Series
    The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Volume 06 Poems from the Breakfast Table Series
    The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Volume 06 Poems from the Breakfast Table Series
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    The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Volume 06 Poems from the Breakfast Table Series

    By Oliver Wendell Holmes

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 15, 2013
    The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Volume 06 Poems from the Breakfast Table Series
    Author

    Oliver Wendell Holmes

    Oliver Wendell Holmes was an American physician, poet, and polymath based in Boston. A member of the Fireside Poets, he was acclaimed by his peers as one of the best writers of the day. His most famous prose works are the “Breakfast Table” series, which began with The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.

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      The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Volume 06 Poems from the Breakfast Table Series - Oliver Wendell Holmes

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. 6, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. 6 Poems From The Breakfast-Table Series (1857-1872)

      Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

      Release Date: September 30, 2004 [EBook #7393]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETRY OF HOLMES, VOL. 6 ***

      Produced by David Widger

      THE POETICAL WORKS

      OF

      OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

      [Volume 2 of the 1893 three volume set]

      POEMS FROM THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE (1857-1858)

           THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS

           SUN AND SHADOW

           MUSA

           A PARTING HEALTH: To J. L. MOTLEY

           WHAT WE ALL THINK

           SPRING HAS COME

           PROLOGUE

           LATTER-DAY WARNINGS

           ALBUM VERSES

           A GOOD TIME GOING!

           THE LAST BLOSSOM

           CONTENTMENT

           AESTIVATION

           THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE; OR, THE WONDERFUL ONE-HOSE SHAY

           PARSON TURELL'S LEGACY; OR, THE PRESIDENT'S OLD ARM-CHAIR

           ODE FOR A SOCIAL MEETING, WITH SLIGHT ALTERATIONS BY A TEETOTALER

      POEMS FROM THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE (1858-1859) UNDER THE VIOLETS HYMN OF TRUST A SUN-DAY HYMN THE CROOKED FOOTPATH IRIS, HER BOOK ROBINSON OF LEYDEN ST ANTHONY THE REFORMER THE OPENING OF THE PIANO MIDSUMMER DE SAUTY

      POEMS FROM THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE (1871-1872) HOMESICK IN HEAVEN FANTASIA AUNT TABITHA WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS EPILOGUE TO THE BREAKFAST-TABLE SERIES

      THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS

      THIS is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,

      Sails the unshadowed main,—

      The venturous bark that flings

      On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings

      In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,

      And coral reefs lie bare,

      Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

      Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;

      Wrecked is the ship of pearl!

      And every chambered cell,

      Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,

      As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,

      Before thee lies revealed,—

      Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

      Year after year beheld the silent toil

      That spread his lustrous coil;

      Still, as the spiral grew,

      He left the past year's dwelling for the new,

      Stole with soft step its shining archway through,

      Built up its idle door,

      Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

      Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,

      Child of the wandering sea,

      Cast from her lap, forlorn!

      From thy dead lips a clearer note is born

      Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn

      While on mine ear it rings,

      Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:—

      Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

      As the swift seasons roll!

      Leave thy low-vaulted past!

      Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

      Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

      Till thou at length art free,

      Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

      SUN AND SHADOW

      As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green,

      To the billows of foam-crested blue,

      Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen,

      Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue

      Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray

      As the chaff in the stroke of the flail;

      Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way,

      The sun gleaming bright on her sail.

      Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun,—

      Of breakers that whiten and roar;

      How little he cares, if in shadow or sun

      They see him who gaze from the shore!

      He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef,

      To the rock that is under his lee,

      As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf,

      O'er the gulfs of the desolate sea.

      Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves

      Where life and its ventures are laid,

      The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves

      May see us in sunshine or shade;

      Yet true to our course, though the shadows grow dark,

      We'll trim our broad sail as before,

      And stand by the rudder that governs the bark,

      Nor ask how we look from the shore!

      MUSA

      O MY lost beauty!—hast thou folded quite

      Thy wings of morning light

      Beyond those iron gates

      Where Life crowds hurrying to the haggard Fates,

      And Age upon his mound of ashes waits

      To chill our fiery dreams,

      Hot from the heart of youth plunged in his icy streams?

      Leave me not fading in these weeds of care,

      Whose flowers are silvered hair!

      Have I not loved thee long,

      Though my young lips have often done thee wrong,

      And vexed thy heaven-tuned ear with careless song?

      Ah, wilt thou yet return,

      Bearing thy rose-hued torch, and bid thine altar burn?

      Come to me!—I will flood thy silent shrine

      With my soul's sacred wine,

      And heap thy marble floors

      As the wild spice-trees waste their fragrant stores,

      In leafy islands walled with madrepores

      And lapped in Orient seas,

      When all their feathery palms toss, plume-like, in the breeze.

      Come to me!—thou shalt feed on honeyed words,

      Sweeter than song of birds;—

      No wailing bulbul's throat,

      No melting dulcimer's melodious note

      When o'er the midnight wave its murmurs float,

      Thy ravished sense might soothe

      With flow so liquid-soft, with strain so velvet-smooth.

      Thou shalt be decked with jewels, like a queen,

      Sought in those bowers of green

      Where loop the clustered vines

      And the close-clinging dulcamara twines,—

      Pure pearls of Maydew where the moonlight shines,

      And Summer's fruited gems,

      And coral pendants shorn from Autumn's berried stems.

      Sit by me drifting on the sleepy waves,—

      Or stretched by grass-grown graves,

      Whose gray, high-shouldered stones,

      Carved with old names Life's time-worn roll disowns,

      Lean, lichen-spotted, o'er the crumbled bones

      Still slumbering where they lay

      While the sad Pilgrim watched to scare the wolf away.

      Spread o'er my couch thy visionary wing!

      Still let me dream and sing,—

      Dream of that winding shore

      Where scarlet cardinals bloom-for me no more,—

      The stream with heaven beneath its liquid floor,

      And clustering nenuphars

      Sprinkling its mirrored

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