Name: The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete
Rating: 5.0 (1 reviews)

Chapter 1 No.1

When the green earth, beneath the zephyr's wing,

Wears on her breast the varnished buds of Spring;

When the loosed current, as its folds uncoil,

Slides in the channels of the mellowed soil;

When the young hyacinth returns to seek

The air and sunshine with her emerald beak;

When the light snowdrops, starting from their cells,

Hang each pagoda with its silver bells;

When the frail willow twines her trailing bow

With pallid leaves that sweep the soil below;

When the broad elm, sole empress of the plain,

Whose circling shadow speaks a century's reign,

Wreathes in the clouds her regal diadem,-

A forest waving on a single stem;-

Then mark the poet; though to him unknown

The quaint-mouthed titles, such as scholars own,

See how his eye in ecstasy pursues

The steps of Nature tracked in radiant hues;

Nay, in thyself, whate'er may be thy fate,

Pallid with toil or surfeited with state,

Mark how thy fancies, with the vernal rose,

Awake, all sweetness, from their long repose;

Then turn to ponder o'er the classic page,

Traced with the idyls of a greener age,

And learn the instinct which arose to warm

Art's earliest essay and her simplest form.

To themes like these her narrow path confined

The first-born impulse moving in the mind;

In vales unshaken by the trumpet's sound,

Where peaceful Labor tills his fertile ground,

The silent changes of the rolling years,

Marked on the soil or dialled on the spheres,

The crested forests and the colored flowers,

The dewy grottos and the blushing bowers,-

These, and their guardians, who, with liquid names,

Strephons and Chloes, melt in mutual flames,

Woo the young Muses from their mountain shade,

To make Arcadias in the lonely glade.

Nor think they visit only with their smiles

The fabled valleys and Elysian isles;

He who is wearied of his village plain

May roam the Edens of the world in vain.

'T is not the star-crowned cliff, the cataract's flow,

The softer foliage or the greener glow,

The lake of sapphire or the spar-hung cave,

The brighter sunset or the broader wave,

Can warm his heart whom every wind has blown

To every shore, forgetful of his own.

Home of our childhood! how affection clings

And hovers round thee with her seraph wings!

Dearer thy hills, though clad in autumn brown,

Than fairest summits which the cedars crown!

Sweeter the fragrance of thy summer breeze

Than all Arabia breathes along the seas!

The stranger's gale wafts home the exile's sigh,

For the heart's temple is its own blue sky!

Oh happiest they, whose early love unchanged,

Hopes undissolved, and friendship unestranged,

Tired of their wanderings, still can deign to see

Love, hopes, and friendship, centring all in thee!

And thou, my village! as again I tread

Amidst thy living and above thy dead;

Though some fair playmates guard with charter fears

Their cheeks, grown holy with the lapse of years;

Though with the dust some reverend locks may blend,

Where life's last mile-stone marks the journey's end;

On every bud the changing year recalls,

The brightening glance of morning memory falls,

Still following onward as the months unclose

The balmy lilac or the bridal rose;

And still shall follow, till they sink once more

Beneath the snow-drifts of the frozen shore,

As when my bark, long tossing in the gale,

Furled in her port her tempest-rended sail!

What shall I give thee? Can a simple lay,

Flung on thy bosom like a girl's bouquet,

Do more than deck thee for an idle hour,

Then fall unheeded, fading like the flower?

Yet, when I trod, with footsteps wild and free,

The crackling leaves beneath yon linden-tree,

Panting from play or dripping from the stream,

How bright the visions of my boyish dream

Or, modest Charles, along thy broken edge,

Black with soft ooze and fringed with arrowy sedge,

As once I wandered in the morning sun,

With reeking sandal and superfluous gun,

How oft, as Fancy whispered in the gale,

Thou wast the Avon of her flattering tale!

Ye hills, whose foliage, fretted on the skies,

Prints shadowy arches on their evening dyes,

How should my song with holiest charm invest

Each dark ravine and forest-lifting crest!

How clothe in beauty each familiar scene,

Till all was classic on my native green!

As the drained fountain, filled with autumn leaves,

The field swept naked of its garnered sheaves,

So wastes at noon the promise of our dawn,

The springs all choking, and the harvest gone.

Yet hear the lay of one whose natal star

Still seemed the brightest when it shone afar;

Whose cheek, grown pallid with ungracious toil,

Glows in the welcome of his parent soil;

And ask no garlands sought beyond the tide,

But take the leaflets gathered at your side.

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The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete

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