The stars their early vigils keep,The silent hours are near,When drooping eyes forget to weep—Yet still we linger here;And what—the passing churl may ask—Can claim such wondrous power,That Toil forgets his wonted task,And Love his promised hour?The Irish harp no longer thrills,Or breathes a fainter tone;The clarion blast from Scotland's hillsAlas! no more is blown.And Passion's burning lip bewailsHer Harold's wasted fire,Still lingering o'er the dust that veilsThe Lord of England's lyre.But grieve not o'er its broken strings,Nor think its soul hath died,While yet the lark at heaven's gate sings,As once o'er Avon's side;—While gentle summer sheds her bloom,And dewy blossoms wave,Alike o'er Juliet's storied tombAnd Nelly's nameless grave.Thou glorious island of the sea!Though wide the wasting floodThat parts our distant land from thee,We claim thy generous blood.Nor o'er thy far horizon springsOne hallowed star of fame.But kindles, like an angel's wings,Our western skies in flame!
The stars their early vigils keep,The silent hours are near,When drooping eyes forget to weep—Yet still we linger here;And what—the passing churl may ask—Can claim such wondrous power,That Toil forgets his wonted task,And Love his promised hour?The Irish harp no longer thrills,Or breathes a fainter tone;The clarion blast from Scotland's hillsAlas! no more is blown.And Passion's burning lip bewailsHer Harold's wasted fire,Still lingering o'er the dust that veilsThe Lord of England's lyre.But grieve not o'er its broken strings,Nor think its soul hath died,While yet the lark at heaven's gate sings,As once o'er Avon's side;—While gentle summer sheds her bloom,And dewy blossoms wave,Alike o'er Juliet's storied tombAnd Nelly's nameless grave.Thou glorious island of the sea!Though wide the wasting floodThat parts our distant land from thee,We claim thy generous blood.Nor o'er thy far horizon springsOne hallowed star of fame.But kindles, like an angel's wings,Our western skies in flame!
The stars their early vigils keep,The silent hours are near,When drooping eyes forget to weep—Yet still we linger here;And what—the passing churl may ask—Can claim such wondrous power,That Toil forgets his wonted task,And Love his promised hour?
The Irish harp no longer thrills,Or breathes a fainter tone;The clarion blast from Scotland's hillsAlas! no more is blown.And Passion's burning lip bewailsHer Harold's wasted fire,Still lingering o'er the dust that veilsThe Lord of England's lyre.
But grieve not o'er its broken strings,Nor think its soul hath died,While yet the lark at heaven's gate sings,As once o'er Avon's side;—While gentle summer sheds her bloom,And dewy blossoms wave,Alike o'er Juliet's storied tombAnd Nelly's nameless grave.
Thou glorious island of the sea!Though wide the wasting floodThat parts our distant land from thee,We claim thy generous blood.Nor o'er thy far horizon springsOne hallowed star of fame.But kindles, like an angel's wings,Our western skies in flame!
INthe year 1857, Mr. Phillips, of the firm of Phillips & Sampson, undertook the publication in Boston, of a new literary magazine. They were fortunate in securing James Russell Lowell as editor, and one condition he made upon accepting the office was, that his friend, Doctor Holmes, should be one of the chief contributors.
It was the latter, also, who was called upon to name the new magazine. Thus was theAtlantic Monthlylaunched upon the great sea of literature—a periodical that has never lost its first high prestige.
When Doctor Holmes sat down to write his first article for the new magazine, he remembered that some twenty-five years before, he had begun a series of papers for a certainNew England Magazine, published in Boston, by J. T. & E. Buckingham, with the title ofAutocratof the Breakfast-Table. Curious, as he says, to try the experiment of shaking the same bough again and finding out if the ripe fruit were better or worse than the early wind-falls, he took the same title for his new articles.
"The man is father to the boy that was," he adds, "and I am my own son, as it seems to me, in those papers of theNew England Magazine."
To show the reader some family traits of this "young autocrat," we quote from these earlier articles the following fine extracts:
"When I feel inclined to read poetry, I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The author may arrange the gems effectively, but their shape and lustre have been given by the attrition of ages. Bring me the finest simile from the whole range of imaginative writing, and I will show you a single word which conveys a more profound, a more accurate, and a more eloquent analogy.
"Once on a time, a notion was started that if all the people in the world would shout at once, it might be heard in the moon. So the projectors agreed it should be done in just tenyears. Some thousand shiploads of chronometers were distributed to the selectmen and other great folks of all the different nations. For a year beforehand, nothing else was talked about but the awful noise that was to be made on the great occasion. When the time came everybody had their ears so wide open to hear the universal ejaculation of boo—the word agreed upon—that nobody spoke except a deaf man in one of the Fejee Islands, and a woman in Pekin, so that the world was never so still since the creation."
At the close of the year when the twelve numbers ofThe Autocrat of the Breakfast-Tablewere completed in theAtlantic Monthlyand published in book form, theBritish Reviewwrote of the illustrious author as follows:
"Oliver Wendell Holmes has been long known in this country as the author of some poems written in stately classic verse, abounding in happy thoughts and bright bird-peeps of fancy, such as this, for example:
The punch-bowl's sounding depths were stirred,Its silver cherubs smiling as they heard.
The punch-bowl's sounding depths were stirred,Its silver cherubs smiling as they heard.
The punch-bowl's sounding depths were stirred,Its silver cherubs smiling as they heard.
And this first glint of spring—
The spendthrift Crocus, bursting through the mould,Naked and shivering with his cup of gold.
The spendthrift Crocus, bursting through the mould,Naked and shivering with his cup of gold.
The spendthrift Crocus, bursting through the mould,Naked and shivering with his cup of gold.
He is also known as the writer of many pieces which wear a serious look until they break out into a laugh at the end, perhaps in the last line, as with those onLending a Punch Bowl, a cunning way of the writer's; just as the knot is tied in the whip cord at the end of the lash to enhance the smack.
"But neither of these kinds of verse prepared us for anything so good, so sustained, so national, and yet so akin to our finest humorists, asThe Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table; a very delightful book—a handy book for the breakfast table. A book to conjure up a cosey winter picture of a ruddy fire and singing kettle, soft hearth-rug, warm slippers, and easy chair; a musical chime of cups and saucers, fragrance of tea and toast within, and those flowers of frost fading on the windows without as though old Winter just looked in, but his cold breath was melted, and so he passed by. A book to possess two copies of; one to be read and marked, thumbed and dog-eared; and one to stand up in its pride of place with the rest on the shelves, all ranged in shining rows,as dear old friends, and not merely as nodding acquaintances.
"Not at all like that ponderous and overbearing autocrat, Doctor Johnson, is our Yankee friend. He has more of Goldsmith's sweetness and lovability. He is as true a lover of elegance and high bred grace, dainty fancies, and all pleasurable things, as was Leigh Hunt; he has more wordly sense without the moral languor; but there is the same boy-heart beating in a manly breast, beneath the poet's singing robe. For he is a poet as well as a humorist. Indeed, although this book is written in prose, it is full of poetry, with the 'beaded bubbles' of humor dancing up through the true hippocrene and 'winking at the brim' with a winning look of invitation shining in their merry eyes.
"The humor and the poetry of the book do not lie in tangible nuggets for extraction, but they are there; they pervade it from beginning to end. We cannot spoon out the sparkles of sunshine as they shimmer on the wavelets of water; but they are there, moving in all their golden life and evanescent grace.
"Holmes may not be so recognizably nationalas Lowell; his prominent characteristics are not so exceptionally Yankee; the traits are not so peculiar as those delineated in theBiglow Papers. But he is national. One of the most hopeful literary signs of this book is its quiet nationality. The writer has made no straining and gasping efforts after that which is striking and peculiar, which has always been the bane of youth, whether in nations or individuals. He has been content to take the common, homespun, everyday humanity that he found ready to hand—people who do congregate around the breakfast table of an American boarding-house; and out of this material he has wrought with a vivid touch and truth of portraiture, and won the most legitimate triumph of a genuine book....
"Holmes has the pleasantest possible way of saying things that many people don't like to hear. His tonics are bitter and bland. He does not spare the various foibles and vices of his countrymen and women. But it is done so good-naturedly, or with a sly puff of diamond dust in the eyes of the victims, who don't see the joke which is so apparent to us. As good old Isaak Walton advises respecting the worm,he impales them tenderly as though he loved them."
How vividly every personage around that delightful "Breakfast-Table" is photographed upon the reader's mind! Can you not see the dear "Old Gentleman" just opposite the "Autocrat," as he suddenly surprises the company by repeating a beautiful hymn he learned in childhood? And the pale sweet "Schoolmistress" in her modest mourning dress? no wonder the eyes of the Autocrat frequently wandered to that part of the table and certain remarks are addressed to her alone! To tell the truth, we can't help falling in love with her ourselves! What a fine foil to this "soft-voiced little woman," is the landlady's daughter—that "tender-eyed blonde, with her long ringlets, cameo pin, gold pencil-case on a chain, locket, bracelet, album, autograph book, and accordion—who says 'Yes?' when you tell her anything, and reads Byron, Tupper, and Sylvanus Cobb Junior, while her mother makes the puddings!" Then there is the "poor relation" from the country—"a somewhat more than middle-aged female, with parchment forehead and a dry littlefrizette shingling it, a sallow neck with a necklace of gold beads, and a black dress too rusty for recent grief." Can you not hear the very tones of her high-pitched voice as she remarks that "Buckwheat is skerce and high."
"The Professor" under chloroform—"the young man whom they call John," appropriating the three peaches in illustration of the Autocrat's metaphysics—the boy, Benjamin Franklin, poring over his French exercises—the Poet, who had to leave town when the anniversaries came round—and the divinity student whose head the Autocrat tries occasionally, "as housewives try eggs," all these are so real to the reader that he can but feel they were something more than imaginary characters to the writer.
Among the poems that close each number of theAutocrat, are some of the finest in our language.The Chambered Nautilus,The Living Temple,The Voiceless, andThe Two Armies, are full of inspiring thought and deep pathos, whileThe Deacon's Masterpiece,Parson Turell's Legacy,The Old Man's Dream, andContentment, sparkle with the Autocrat's own peculiar humor.
"When we think of the familiar confidences of the Autocrat," says Underwood, "we mightliken him to Montaigne. But when the parallel is being considered, we come upon passages so full of tingling hits or of rollicking fun, that we are sure we are mistaken, and that he resembles no one so much as Sidney Smith. But presently he sounds the depths of our consciousness, explores the concealed channels of feeling, flashes the light of genius upon our half-acknowledged thoughts, and we see that this is what neither the great Gascon nor the hearty and jovial Englishman could have attempted, ... when the world forgets the sallies that have set tables in a roar, and even the lyrics that have set a nation's heart on fire, Holmes' picture of the ship of pearl will preserve his name forever."
THEAutocrat of the Breakfast-Tablewas followed in 1859 byThe Professor, a series of similar essays, in which we are introduced to "Iris" and "Little Boston," and begin to realize Doctor Holmes' inimitable skill in dramatic effect as well as in character painting.The Story of Irishas been printed by itself in Rossiter Johnson'sLittle Classics, and reads like an exquisite prose poem; but after all, we like best to follow the delicate thread of narrative just as the professor himself has introduced it—a dainty aria whose harmony runs under and over and all through the deep philosophy and sparkling table talk of the book.
It prepares us, too, forElsie Venner, the "Professor's Story"—a novel whose weird conception holds us spell-bound from beginningto end, in spite of the sadness—"the pity of it." At the very first introduction to Elsie we have a hint of the strange hereditary curse that throws its blight over her whole nature:
"Who and what is that," asks the new master, "sitting a little apart there—that strange, wild-looking girl?"
The lady teacher's face changed; one would have said she was frightened or troubled. She looked at the girl doubtfully, as if she might hear the master's question and its answer. But the girl did not look up; she was winding a gold chain about her wrist, and then uncoiling it, as if in a kind of reverie.
Miss Dailey drew close to the master and placed her hand so as to hide her lips.
"Don't look at her as if we were talking about her," she whispered softly, "that is Elsie Venner."
The more we read of her, the more her sad beauty fascinates us.
"She looked as if she might hate, but could not love. She hardly smiled at anything, spoke rarely, but seemed to feel that her natural power of expression lay all in her bright eyes,the force of which so many had felt, but none perhaps had tried to explain to themselves. A person accustomed to watch the faces of those who were ailing in body or mind, and to search in every line and tint for some underlying source of disorder, could hardly help analyzing the impression such a face produced upon him. The light of those beautiful eyes was like the lustre of ice; in all her features there was nothing of that human warmth which shows that sympathy has reached the soul beneath the mask of flesh it wears. The look was that of remoteness, of utter isolation. There was in its stony apathy the pathos which we find in the blind who show no film or speck over the organs of sight; for Nature had meant her to be lovely, and left out nothing but love."
The mother of Elsie, some months before the birth of her child, had been bitten by a rattlesnake. The instant use of powerful antidotes seemed to arrest the fatal poison, but death ensued a few weeks after the birth of her little girl.
"There was something not human looking out of Elsie's eyes.... There were twowarring principles in that superb organization and proud soul. One made her a woman, with all a woman's powers and longings. The other chilled all the currents of outlets for her emotions. It made her tearless and mute, when another woman would have wept and pleaded. And it infused into her soul something—it was cruel to call it malice—which was still and watchful and dangerous—which waited its opportunity, and then shot like an arrow from its bow out of the coil of brooding premeditation."
But the cloud—"the ante-natal impression which had mingled an alien element in Elsie's nature"—is mercifully lifted just before her death.
She had fallen into a light slumber, and when she awoke and looked up into her father's face, she seemed to realize his tenderness and affection as never before.
"Elsie dear," he said, "we were thinking how much your expression was, sometimes, like that of your sweet mother. If you could but have seen her so as to remember her!"
The tender look and tone, the yearning of the daughter's heart for the mother she hadnever seen, save only with the unfixed, undistinguishable eyes of earliest infancy, perhaps the understanding that she might soon rejoin her in another state of being,—all came upon her with a sudden overflow of feeling which broke through all the barriers between her heart and her eyes, and Elsie wept. It seemed to her father as if the malign influence—evil spirit it might almost be called—which had pervaded her being, had at least been driven forth or exorcised, and that these tears were at once the sign and pledge of her redeemed nature. But now she was to be soothed and not excited. After her tears she slept again, and the look her face wore was peaceful as never before.
While "Elsie Venner" is a purely imaginary conception, the author tells us that after beginning the story he received the most striking confirmation of the possibility of the existence of such a character. The reader is awakened to new views of human responsibility in the perusal of Elsie's life, and with good old pastor Honeywood learns a lesson of patience with his fellow creatures in their inborn peculiarities and of charity in judgingwhat seem to him wilful faults of character.
The Professor's story while centring the interest upon Elsie, gives numerous side glances of New England village life; and old Sophy, Helen Darley, Silas Peckham, Bernard Langdon, Dick Venner, and the good Doctor are portrayed in vivid colors. There is a deal of psychology throughout the book, and not a little theology—good wholesome theology too, as the following brief extract shows:
"The good minister was as kind-hearted as if he had never groped in the dust and ashes of those cruel old abstractions which have killed out so much of the world's life and happiness. 'With the heart man believeth unto righteousness;' a man's love is the measure of his fitness for good or bad company here or elsewhere. Men are tattooed with their special beliefs like so many South Sea Islanders; but a real human heart, with divine love in it, beats with the same glow under all the patterns of all earth's thousand tribes!"
The pathos of poor Elsie's story is relieved now and then by humorous descriptions of country manners and customs. The Sprowles' party and the Widow Rowen's "tea-fight"give a vein of light comedy that rests the sympathetic reader as a sudden merry smile upon a grave and troubled face.
The Guardian Angel, the second novel of Doctor Holmes, was not published until 1867, but it is interesting to compare the two stories, for there is a strong family likeness between them. Both show the power of inherited tendencies, though Myrtle Hazard, the heroine ofThe Guardian Angel, has no alien element in her blood like that which tormented poor Elsie. With Myrtle "it was as when several grafts, bearing fruit that ripens at different times, are growing upon the same stock. Her earlier impulses may have been derived directly from her father and mother, but various ancestors came uppermost in their time before the absolute and total result of their several forces had found its equilibrium in the character by which she was to be known as an individual. These inherited impulses were therefore many, conflicting, some of them dangerous. The World, the Flesh, and the Devil held mortgages on her life before its deed was put in her hands; but sweet and gracious influences were also bornwith her; and the battle of life was to be fought between them, God helping her in her need, and her own free choice siding with one or the other."
The scene opens in a quiet New England village which is roused from its usual lethargy by the startling announcement in the weekly paper of a lost child. This is none other than the little orphan, Myrtle Hazard, who after a few dreary years in the dismal Wither's homestead, escapes by night in her little boat, is rescued by a young student from a frightful death at the rapids, and brought back to her distressed Aunt Silence by good old Byles Gridley—the true "Guardian Angel" of her life.
When old Doctor Hurlbut "ninety-two, very deaf, very feeble, yet a wise counsellor in doubtful and difficult cases," comes to prescribe for the young girl, he says to his son:
"I've seen that look on another face of the same blood—it's a great many years ago, and she was dead before you were born, my boy,—but I've seen that look, and it meant trouble then, and I'm afraid it means trouble now. I see some danger of a brain fever. And if shedoesn't have that, then look out for some hysteric fits that will make mischief.... I've been through it all before in that same house. Live folks are only dead folks warmed over. I can see 'em all in that girl's face.—Handsome Judith to begin with. And that queer woman, the Deacon's mother—there's where she gets that hystericky look. Yes, and the black-eyed woman with the Indian blood in her—look out for that—look out for that.
... Four generations—four generations, man and wife—yes, five generations before this Hazard child I've looked on with these old eyes. And it seems to me that I can see something of almost every one of 'em in this child's face—it's the forehead of this one, and it's the eyes of that one, and it's that other's mouth, and the look that I remember in another, and when she speaks, why, I've heard that same voice before—yes, yes—as long ago as when I was first married."
Aside from the interest of the story there is a strange fascination in tracing the development of these various ancestral traits.
"This body in which we journey across the isthmus between the two oceans is not a private carriage, but an omnibus," says old Byles Gridley in hisThoughts on the Universe—dead book that was destined to so grand a resurrection! Surely no one can deny the successive development of inherited bodily aspects and habitudes, and the same thing happens, the author avers, "in the mental and moral nature, though the latter may be less obvious to common observation."
The Guardian Angelwhile a deep study of the Reflex Function in its higher sphere, is not without its lighter, more mirthful side. SaysThe London News, "the story is exceedingly humorous and comic in the less serious chapters. There is no such minor poet in the whole range of fiction as the immortal Gifted Hopkins. In the character of Hopkins all the foibles and vanities of the literary nature are exemplified in the most mirthful manner. If Doctor Holmes has more characters like Gifted Hopkins in his mind, the hilarity of two continents is not in much danger of being extinguished."
Here is a glimpse of the young poet when racked with jealousy:
"He retired pensive from the interview, andflinging himself at his desk, attempted wreaking his thoughts upon expression, to borrow the language of one of his brother bards, in a passionate lyric which he began thus:
Another's!Another's! O the pang, the smart!Fate owes to Love a deathless grudge—The barbed fang has rent a heartWhich—which—
Another's!Another's! O the pang, the smart!Fate owes to Love a deathless grudge—The barbed fang has rent a heartWhich—which—
Another's!Another's! O the pang, the smart!Fate owes to Love a deathless grudge—The barbed fang has rent a heartWhich—which—
judge—judge—no, not judge. Budge, drudge, fudge—what a disgusting language English is! Nothing fit to couple with such a word as grudge! And an impassioned moment arrested in full flow, stopped short, corked up, for want of a paltry rhyme! Judge—budge—drudge nudge—oh!—smudge—misery!—fudge. In vain—futile—no use—all up for to-night!'"
The next day the dejected poet "wandered about with a dreadfully disconsolate look upon his countenance. He showed a falling-off in his appetite at tea-time, which surprised and disturbed his mother.... The most touching evidence of his unhappiness—whether intentional on the result of accident was not evident—was abroken heart, which he left upon his plate, the meaning of which was asplain as anything in the language of flowers. His thoughts were gloomy, running a good deal on the more picturesque and impressive methods of bidding a voluntary farewell to a world which had allured him with visions of beauty only to snatch them from his impassioned gaze. His mother saw something of this, and got from him a few disjointed words, which led her to lock up the clothes-line and hide her late husband's razors—an affectionate, yet perhaps unnecessary precaution, for self-elimination contemplated from this point of view by those who have the natural outlet of verse to relieve them is rarely followed by a casualty. It may be considered as implying a more than average chance for longevity; as those who meditate an imposing finish naturally save themselves for it, and are therefore careful of their health until the time comes, and this is apt to be indefinitely postponed so long as there is a poem to write or a proof to be corrected."
Gifted Hopkins survives the ordeal, and completes his volume of poems,Blossoms of the Soul. Good old master Gridley, who foresees what the end will be, offers to accompany the young poet in his visit to the city publisher.What a world of pathos there is in the fond mother's preparations for the momentous journey: She brings down from the garret "a capacious trunk, of solid wood, but covered with leather, and adorned with brass-headed nails, by the cunning disposition of which, also, the paternal initials stood out on the rounded lid, in the most conspicuous manner. It was his father's trunk, and the first thing that went into it, as the widow lifted the cover, and the smothering shut-up smell struck an old chord of associations, was a single tear-drop. How well she remembered the time when she first unpacked it for her young husband, and the white shirt bosoms showed their snowy plaits! O dear, dear!
"But women decant their affections, sweet and sound, out of the old bottles into the new ones—off from the lees of the past generation, clear and bright, into the clean vessels just made ready to receive it. Gifted Hopkins was his mother's idol, and no wonder. She had not only the common attachment of a parent for him, as her offspring, but she felt that her race was to be rendered illustrious by his genius, and thought proudly of the timewhen some future biographer would mention her own humble name, to be held in lasting remembrance as that of the mother of Hopkins."
The description of the various articles that went into the trunk is humorous enough.
"Best clothes and common clothes, thick clothes and thin clothes, flannels and linens, socks and collars, with handkerchiefs enough to keep the pickpockets busy for a week, with a paper of gingerbread and some lozenges for gastralgia, and 'hot drops,' and ruled paper to write letters on, and a little Bible and a phial withhiera piera, and another with paregoric, and another with 'camphire' for sprains and bruises. Gifted went forth equipped for every climate from the tropic to the pole, and armed against every malady from ague to zoster."
The poet's interview with the publisher is one of the best things in the book, but to be thoroughly enjoyed, it must be read entire.
The genial, kindly nature of Doctor Holmes is strikingly shown throughout the whole volume. Good, quaint Byles Gridley endears himself more and more to the reader, Gifted Hopkins finds in his heart's choice an appreciative, admiring audience of at least one, Cyprian Eveleth andyoung Doctor Hurlbut are most happily disposed of, Clement Lindsay receives his reward, Myrtle Hazard emerges from the conflict of mingled lives in her blood with the dross of her nature burned away, aunt Silence throws off her melancholy, Miss Cynthia Badlam repents of her evil manœuvrings and dies "with the comfortable assurance that she is going to a better world," the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker learns to appreciate his patient wife—even Murray Bradshaw, the acknowledged villain of the book, is not without a few redeeming traits, and we close the volume with a sense of hearty goodwill and fervent charity toward all mankind.
BETWEENthe writing ofElsie VennerandThe Guardian Angel, Doctor Holmes wrote a number of essays for theAtlantic Monthly, some of which were afterwards collected in the volume entitledSoundings from the Atlantic.
Currents and Counter-currentswas published in 1861, andBorder-lines of Knowledgein 1862. The two latter books deal with scientific subjects, but are written in such an attractive style that they have been extremely popular not only with students but with the whole reading public.Songs in many Keys, a volume of poems dedicated to his mother, was published by Doctor Holmes in 1862.Mechanism in Thoughts and Moralsappeared in 1871, the same year thatThe Poet at the Breakfast-Tablewas running as a serial in theAtlanticMonthly, and numerous stray poems were also written in this prolific decade. In 1872 the poet's breakfast talk was published in book form. It is interesting to compare these three volumes—The Autocrat, the Professor, and the Poet. As a series they are as necessary to one another as the three strands of a cable, and yet each volume is, in a certain way, completed in itself. Where in the whole range of the English language, or indeed, of any language, will you find such an overflow of spontaneous wit and humor? While in no sense a story or even a narrative, the breakfast talk is enlivened by wonderfully life-like characters. We can easily imagine ourselves sitting beside them at the social table, and just as it is in real life, these chance acquaintances touch us at different points, awaken various degrees of interest, and are at all times quite distinct from the observer's own individuality.
There is not a page without its sparkle of humor, and nugget of sound philosophy beneath, which the reader appropriates to himself in a delightfully unconscious manner—for the time being, it is he who is the Autocrat, the Professor, the Poet! As some one has truly said,"It is our thoughts which Doctor Holmes speaks; it is our humor to which he gives expression; it is the pictures of our own fancy that he clothes in words, and shows us what we ourselves thought, and only lacked the means of expressing. We never realized until he taught us by his magic power over us, how much each of us had of genius and invention and expression."
Each book has its little romance, and the "Poet" introduces a poor gentlewoman whose story interests us quite as much as does that of the two lovers.
"In a little chamber," he says, "into which a small thread of sunshine finds its way for half an hour or so every day during a month or six weeks of the spring or autumn, at all other times obliged to content itself with ungilded daylight, lives this boarder, whom, without wronging any others of our company, I may call, as she is very generally called in the household, the Lady....
"From an aspect of dignified but undisguised economy which showed itself in her dress as well as in her limited quarters, I suspected a story of shipwrecked fortune, and determined toquestion our Landlady. That worthy woman was delighted to tell the history of her most distinguished boarder. She was, as I had supposed, a gentlewoman whom a change of circumstances had brought down from her high estate.—Did I know the Goldenrod family?—Of course I did.—Well, the lady was first cousin to Mrs. Midas Goldenrod. She had been here in her carriage to call upon her—not very often.—Were her rich relations kind and helpful to her?—Well, yes; at least they made her presents now and then. Three or four years ago they sent her a silver waiter, and every Christmas they sent her a bouquet—it must cost as much as five dollars, the Landlady thought.
"And how did the Lady receive these valuable and useful things?
"Every Christmas she got out the silver waiter and borrowed a glass tumbler and filled it with water, and put the bouquet in it and set it on the waiter. It smelt sweet enough and looked pretty for a day or two, but the Landlady thought it wouldn't have hurt 'em if they'd sent a piece of goods for a dress, or at least a pocket handkercher or two, or something or other that she could 'a' made use of....
"What did she do?—Why, she read, and she drew pictures, and she did needlework patterns, and played on an old harp she had; the gilt was mostly off, but it sounded very sweet, and she sung to it, sometimes, those old songs that used to be in fashion twenty or thirty years ago, with words to 'em that folks could understand....
"Poor Lady! She seems to me like a picture that has fallen face downward on the dusty floor. The picture never was as needful as a window or a door, but it was pleasant to see it in its place, and it would be pleasant to see it there again, and I for one, should be thankful to have the Lady restored by some turn of fortune to the position from which she has been so cruelly cast down."
Before the Poet closes his breakfast talk, the poor Lady has, through the efforts of another boarder, the Register of Deeds, recovered her property. Mrs. Midas Goldenrod makes frequent and longer calls—"the very moment her relative, the Lady of our breakfast table, began to find herself in a streak of sunshine she cameforward with a lighted candle to show her which way her path lay before her.
"The Lady saw all this, how plainly, how painfully! yet she exercised a true charity for the weakness of her relative. Sensible people have as much consideration for the frailties of the rich as for those of the poor.
"The Lady that's been so long with me is going to a house of her own," said the Landlady, "one she has bought back again, for it used to belong to her folks. It's a beautiful house, and the sun shines in at the front windows all day long. She's going to be wealthy again, but it doesn't make any difference in her ways. I've had boarders complain when I was doing as well as I knowed how for them, but I never heerd a word from her that wasn't as pleasant as if she'd been talking to the Governor's lady."
The strange little man, denominated "Scarabee," who had grown to look so much like the beetles he studied; the "Member of the House" with his Down East phrases; the little "Scheherazade" who furnishes a new story each week for the newspapers;—the good looking, rosy-cheeked salesman "of very polite manners, only a little more brisk than the approved style of carriage permits, as one in the habit of springing with a certain alacrity at the call of a customer;" the good old Master of Arts who makes so many sage remarks;—the young Astronomer with his heart confessions in theWind-clouds and Star-drifts—all these are new acquaintances whom we are loth to part with, when the Landlady announces her intention of giving up the famous boarding-house, and the Poet drops the curtain. Would that the Old Master could yet be induced to give to the public those "notes and reflections and new suggestions" of his marvellous "interleaved volume!"
WHENwe come to consider Doctor Holmes on the poet side of his many-sided nature, his own words at the famous Breakfast-Table are vividly brought to mind:
"The works of other men live, but their personality dies out of their labors; the poet, who reproduces himself in his creation, as no other artist does or can, goes down to posterity with all his personality blended with whatever is imperishable in his song.... A single lyric is enough, if one can only find in his soul and finish in his intellect one of those jewels fit to sparkle on the stretched forefinger of all time."
In the poems of Doctor Holmes we are quite sure there are many just such lyrics that the world will not willingly let die.The Last Leaf, The Voiceless, The Chambered Nautilus, TheTwo Armies, The Old Man's Dream, Under the Violets, Dorothy Q.—but where shall we stop in the long enumeration of popular favorites like these?
Oliver Wendell Holmes touches the heart as well as the intellect, and that aside from his power as a humorist, is one great secret of his success.
Listen, for instance, to this exquisite bit:
Yes, dear departed, cherished daysCould Memory's hand restoreYour Morning light, your evening raysFrom Time's gray urn once more,—Then might this restless heart be still,This straining eye might close,And Hope her fainting pinions fold,While the fair phantoms rose.But, like a child in ocean's arms,We strive against the stream,Each moment farther from the shoreWhere life's young fountains gleam;—Each moment fainter wave the fields,And wider rolls the sea;The mist grows dark,—the sun goes down,—Day breaks,—and where are we?
Yes, dear departed, cherished daysCould Memory's hand restoreYour Morning light, your evening raysFrom Time's gray urn once more,—Then might this restless heart be still,This straining eye might close,And Hope her fainting pinions fold,While the fair phantoms rose.But, like a child in ocean's arms,We strive against the stream,Each moment farther from the shoreWhere life's young fountains gleam;—Each moment fainter wave the fields,And wider rolls the sea;The mist grows dark,—the sun goes down,—Day breaks,—and where are we?
Yes, dear departed, cherished daysCould Memory's hand restoreYour Morning light, your evening raysFrom Time's gray urn once more,—Then might this restless heart be still,This straining eye might close,And Hope her fainting pinions fold,While the fair phantoms rose.
But, like a child in ocean's arms,We strive against the stream,Each moment farther from the shoreWhere life's young fountains gleam;—Each moment fainter wave the fields,And wider rolls the sea;The mist grows dark,—the sun goes down,—Day breaks,—and where are we?
And what a dainty touch is given to thisSong of the Sun-Worshipper's Daughter!
Kiss mine eyelids, beauteous MornBlushing into life new born!Send me violets for my hairAnd thy russet robe to wear,And thy ring of rosiest hueSet in drops of diamond dew!* * * * * * *Kiss my lips, thou Lord of light,Kiss my lips a soft good-night!Westward sinks thy golden car;Leave me but the evening starAnd my solace that shall beBorrowing all its light from thee.
Kiss mine eyelids, beauteous MornBlushing into life new born!Send me violets for my hairAnd thy russet robe to wear,And thy ring of rosiest hueSet in drops of diamond dew!* * * * * * *Kiss my lips, thou Lord of light,Kiss my lips a soft good-night!Westward sinks thy golden car;Leave me but the evening starAnd my solace that shall beBorrowing all its light from thee.
Kiss mine eyelids, beauteous MornBlushing into life new born!Send me violets for my hairAnd thy russet robe to wear,And thy ring of rosiest hueSet in drops of diamond dew!* * * * * * *Kiss my lips, thou Lord of light,Kiss my lips a soft good-night!Westward sinks thy golden car;Leave me but the evening starAnd my solace that shall beBorrowing all its light from thee.
* * * * * * *
And where will you find a more pathetic picture than that of the old musician inThe Silent Melody?
Bring me my broken harp, he said;We both are wrecks—but as ye will—Though all its ringing tones have fled,Their echoes linger round it still;It had some golden strings, I know,But that was long—how long!—ago.I cannot see its tarnished gold;I cannot hear its vanished tone;Scarce can my trembling fingers holdThe pillared frame so long their own;We both are wrecks—a while agoIt had some silver strings, I know.But on them Time too long has playedThe solemn strain that knows no change,And where of old my fingers strayedThe chords they find are new and strange—Yes; iron strings—I know—I know—We both are wrecks of long ago.
Bring me my broken harp, he said;We both are wrecks—but as ye will—Though all its ringing tones have fled,Their echoes linger round it still;It had some golden strings, I know,But that was long—how long!—ago.I cannot see its tarnished gold;I cannot hear its vanished tone;Scarce can my trembling fingers holdThe pillared frame so long their own;We both are wrecks—a while agoIt had some silver strings, I know.But on them Time too long has playedThe solemn strain that knows no change,And where of old my fingers strayedThe chords they find are new and strange—Yes; iron strings—I know—I know—We both are wrecks of long ago.
Bring me my broken harp, he said;We both are wrecks—but as ye will—Though all its ringing tones have fled,Their echoes linger round it still;It had some golden strings, I know,But that was long—how long!—ago.
I cannot see its tarnished gold;I cannot hear its vanished tone;Scarce can my trembling fingers holdThe pillared frame so long their own;We both are wrecks—a while agoIt had some silver strings, I know.
But on them Time too long has playedThe solemn strain that knows no change,And where of old my fingers strayedThe chords they find are new and strange—Yes; iron strings—I know—I know—We both are wrecks of long ago.
With pitying smiles the broken harp is brought to him. Not a single string remains.
But see! like children overjoyed,His fingers rambling through the void!
But see! like children overjoyed,His fingers rambling through the void!
But see! like children overjoyed,His fingers rambling through the void!
They gather softly around the old musician.
Rapt in his tuneful trance he seems;His fingers move; but not a sound!A silence like the song of dreams...."There! ye have heard the air," he cries,"That brought the tears from Marian's eyes!"
Rapt in his tuneful trance he seems;His fingers move; but not a sound!A silence like the song of dreams...."There! ye have heard the air," he cries,"That brought the tears from Marian's eyes!"
Rapt in his tuneful trance he seems;His fingers move; but not a sound!A silence like the song of dreams...."There! ye have heard the air," he cries,"That brought the tears from Marian's eyes!"
The poem closes with these fine stanzas:
Ah, smile not at his fond conceit,Nor deem his fancy wrought in vain;To him the unreal sounds are sweet,No discord mars the silent strainScored on life's latest, starlit pageThe voiceless melody of age.Sweet are the lips of all that sing,When Nature's music breathes unsought,But never yet could voice or stringSo truly shape our tenderest thought,As when by life's decaying fireOur fingers sweep the stringless lyre!
Ah, smile not at his fond conceit,Nor deem his fancy wrought in vain;To him the unreal sounds are sweet,No discord mars the silent strainScored on life's latest, starlit pageThe voiceless melody of age.Sweet are the lips of all that sing,When Nature's music breathes unsought,But never yet could voice or stringSo truly shape our tenderest thought,As when by life's decaying fireOur fingers sweep the stringless lyre!
Ah, smile not at his fond conceit,Nor deem his fancy wrought in vain;To him the unreal sounds are sweet,No discord mars the silent strainScored on life's latest, starlit pageThe voiceless melody of age.
Sweet are the lips of all that sing,When Nature's music breathes unsought,But never yet could voice or stringSo truly shape our tenderest thought,As when by life's decaying fireOur fingers sweep the stringless lyre!
Though entirely different in style,Bill and Joeis another of those heart-reaching, tear-starting poems.
Listen, for instance, to these few verses:
Come, dear old comrade, you and IWill steal an hour from days gone by;The shining days when life was new,And all was bright with morning dew,The lusty days of long agoWhen you were Bill and I was Joe.* * * * * * *You've won the judge's ermined robe,You've taught your name to half the globe,You've sung mankind a deathless strain;You've made the dead past live again;The world may call you what it will,But you and I are Joe and Bill.* * * * * * *How Bill forgets his hour of pride,While Joe sits smiling at his side;How Joe, in spite of time's disguiseFinds the old schoolmate in his eyes,—Those calm, stern eyes that melt and fill,As Joe looks fondly up at Bill.Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame?A fitful tongue of leaping flame;A giddy whirlwind's fickle gustThat lifts a pinch of mortal dust;A few swift years and who can showWhich dust was Bill, and which was Joe?The weary idol takes his stand,Holds out his bruised and aching hand,While gaping thousands come and go,—How vain it seems, his empty show!Till all at once his pulses thrill:'Tis poor old Joe's God bless you, Bill!
Come, dear old comrade, you and IWill steal an hour from days gone by;The shining days when life was new,And all was bright with morning dew,The lusty days of long agoWhen you were Bill and I was Joe.* * * * * * *You've won the judge's ermined robe,You've taught your name to half the globe,You've sung mankind a deathless strain;You've made the dead past live again;The world may call you what it will,But you and I are Joe and Bill.* * * * * * *How Bill forgets his hour of pride,While Joe sits smiling at his side;How Joe, in spite of time's disguiseFinds the old schoolmate in his eyes,—Those calm, stern eyes that melt and fill,As Joe looks fondly up at Bill.Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame?A fitful tongue of leaping flame;A giddy whirlwind's fickle gustThat lifts a pinch of mortal dust;A few swift years and who can showWhich dust was Bill, and which was Joe?The weary idol takes his stand,Holds out his bruised and aching hand,While gaping thousands come and go,—How vain it seems, his empty show!Till all at once his pulses thrill:'Tis poor old Joe's God bless you, Bill!
Come, dear old comrade, you and IWill steal an hour from days gone by;The shining days when life was new,And all was bright with morning dew,The lusty days of long agoWhen you were Bill and I was Joe.* * * * * * *You've won the judge's ermined robe,You've taught your name to half the globe,You've sung mankind a deathless strain;You've made the dead past live again;The world may call you what it will,But you and I are Joe and Bill.* * * * * * *How Bill forgets his hour of pride,While Joe sits smiling at his side;How Joe, in spite of time's disguiseFinds the old schoolmate in his eyes,—Those calm, stern eyes that melt and fill,As Joe looks fondly up at Bill.
* * * * * * *
* * * * * * *
Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame?A fitful tongue of leaping flame;A giddy whirlwind's fickle gustThat lifts a pinch of mortal dust;A few swift years and who can showWhich dust was Bill, and which was Joe?
The weary idol takes his stand,Holds out his bruised and aching hand,While gaping thousands come and go,—How vain it seems, his empty show!Till all at once his pulses thrill:'Tis poor old Joe's God bless you, Bill!
The earlier poems of Doctor Holmes are frequently written in the favorite measures of Pope and Hood. This is not at all strange when we remember that in the boyhood of Doctor Holmes these two poets were the most popular of all the English bards. In his later poems, however, we find an endless variety of rhythms, and the careful reader will notice in every instance, a wonderful adaptation of the various poetical forms to the particular thought the poet wishes to convey.
How well Doctor Holmes understands the "mechanism" of verse may be seen from hisPhysiology of Versification and the Harmonies of Organic and Animal Life, a valuable articlepublished in theBoston Medical and Surgical Journalof January 7, 1875.
"Respiration," he says, "has an intimate relation to the structure of metrical compositions, and the reason why octosyllabic verse is so easy to read aloud is because it follows more exactly than any other measure the natural rhythm of the respiration....
"The ten syllable, or heroic line has a peculiar majesty from the very fact that its pronunciation requires a longer respiration than is ordinary.
"The cæsura, it is true, comes in at irregular intervals and serves as a breathing place, but its management requires care in reading, and entirely breaks up the natural rhythm of breathing. The reason why the 'common metre' of our hymn books and the fourteen syllable line of Chapman's Homer is such easy reading is because of the short alternate lines of six and eight syllables. One of the most irksome of all measures is the twelve-syllable line in which Drayton's Polyolbion is written. While the fourteen syllable line can be easily divided in half in reading, the twelve syllable one is too much for one expiration and not enough for two, and for this reason has been avoided by poets.
"There is, however, the personal equation to be taken into account. A person of quiet temperament and ample chest may habitually breathe but fourteen times in a minute, and the heroic measure will therefore be very easy reading to him; a narrow-chested, nervous person, on the contrary, who breathes oftener than twenty times a minute, may prefer the seven-syllable verse, like that of Dyer'sGrongar Hill, to the heroic measure, and quick-breathing children will recite Mother Goose melodies with delight, when long metres would weary and distract them.
"Nothing in poetry or in vocal music is widely popular that is not calculated with strict reference to the respiratory function. All the early ballad poetry shows how instinctively the reciters accommodated their rhythm to their breathing:Chevy Chace, orThe Babes in the Woodmay be taken as an example for verse.God save the King, which has a compass of some half a dozen notes, and takes one expiration, economically used, to each line, may be referred to as the musical illustration.
"The unconscious adaptation of voluntary life to the organic rhythm is perhaps a more pervading fact than we have been in the habit of considering it. One can hardly doubt that Spenser breathedhabitually more slowly than Prior, and that Anacreon had a quicker respiration than Homer. And this difference, which we conjecture from their rhythmical instincts, if our conjecture is true, probably, almost certainly, characterized all their vital movements."
So much for the barevehicleof verse, but the poet himself, as Doctor Holmes says in his review of "Exotics," is a medium, a clairvoyant. "The will is first called in requisition to exclude interfering outward impressions and alien trains of thought. After a certain time the second state or adjustment of the poet's double consciousness (for he has two states, just as the somnambulists have) sets up its own automatic movement, with its special trains of ideas and feelings in the thinking and emotional centres. As soon as the fine frenzy, orquasitrance-state, is fairly established, the consciousness watches the torrent of thoughts and arrests the ones wanted, singly with their fitting expression, or in groups of fortunate sequences which he cannot better by after treatment. As the poetical vocabulary is limited, and its plasticity lends itself only to certain moulds, the mind works under great difficulty, at least until it has acquired by practice such handling of language that everypossibility of rhythm or rhyme offers itself actually or potentially to the clairvoyant perception simultaneously with the thought it is to embody. Thus poetical composition is the most intense, the most exciting, and therefore the most exhausting of mental exercises. It is exciting because its mental states are a series of revelations and surprises; intense on account of the double strain upon the attention. The poet is not the same man who seated himself an hour ago at his desk with the dust-cart and the gutter, or the duck-pond and the hay-stack, and the barnyard fowls beneath his window. He is in the forest with the song-birds; he is on the mountain-top with the eagles. He sat down in rusty broadcloth, he is arrayed in the imperial purple of his singing robes. Let him alone, now, if you are wise, for you might as well have pushed the arm that was finishing the smile of a Madonna, or laid a veil before a train that had a queen on board, as thrust your untimely question on this half-cataleptic child of the Muse, who hardly knows whether he is in the body or out of the body. And do not wonder if, when the fit is over, he is in some respects like one who is recovering after an excess of the baser stimulants."
As a writer of humorous poetry, it is safe to saythat Oliver Wendell Holmes is without a peer.
The Height of the Ridiculous,The September Gale,The Hot Season,The Deacon's Master-piece,Nux Postcoenatica,The Stethoscope Song, how many a "cobweb" have they shaken from the tired brain!
And where in the whole range of humorous literature will you find a more delightful morsel than the "Parting Word," that follows?—