Produced by David Widger

THE POETICAL WORKS

OF

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

[1893 three volume set]

CONTENTS:

TO MY READERS

EARLIER POEMS (1830-1836).
     OLD IRONSIDES
     THE LAST LEAF
     THE CAMBRIDGE CHURCHYARD
     TO AN INSECT
     THE DILEMMA
     MY AUNT
     REFLECTIONS OF A PROUD PEDESTRIAN
     DAILY TRIALS, BY A SENSITIVE MAN
     EVENING, BY A TAILOR
     THE DORCHESTER GIANT
     TO THE PORTRAIT OF "A LADY"
     THE COMET
     THE Music-GRINDERS
     THE TREADMILL SONG
     THE SEPTEMBER GALE
     THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS
     THE LAST READER
     POETRY: A METRICAL ESSAY

TO MY READERS

NAY, 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.

Deal gently with us, ye who read
Our largest hope is unfulfilled,—
The promise still outruns the deed,—
The tower, but not the spire, we build.

Our whitest pearl we never find;
Our ripest fruit we never reach;
The flowering moments of the mind
Drop half their petals in our speech.

These are my blossoms; if they wear
One streak of morn or evening's glow,
Accept them; but to me more fair
The buds of song that never blow.
April 8, 1862.

EARLIER POEMS

1830-1836 OLD IRONSIDES

This was the popular name by which the frigate Constitutionwas known. The poem was first printed in the Boston DailyAdvertiser, at the time when it was proposed to break up theold ship as unfit for service. I subjoin the paragraph whichled to the writing of the poem. It is from the Advertiser ofTuesday, September 14, 1830:—

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