A Holmes Alphabet.
Along its front no sabers shine,
No blood-red pennons wave;
Its banner bears the single line,
“Our duty is to save.”
The Two Armies.
Bring bellows for the panting winds,
Hang up a lantern by the moon;
And give the nightingale a fife,
And lend the eagle a balloon.
The Meeting of the Dryads.
Child of the plowshare, smile;
Boy of the counter, grieve not,
Though muses round thy trundle-bed
Their broidered tissue weave not.
The Poet’s Lot.
Dear friends, who are listening so sweetly the while
With your lips double-reefed in a snug little smile,
I leave you two fables, both drawn from the deep,—
The shells you can drop, but the pearls you may keep.
Verses for After-dinner.
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?
Departed Days.
Flowers will bloom over and over again in poems as in the summer fields, to the end of time, always old and always new. Why should we be more shy of repeating ourselves than the spring be tired of blossoms or the night of stars?—The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table.
God of all nations! Sovereign Lord!
In Thy dread name we draw the sword,
We lift the starry flag on high
That fills with light our stormy sky.
Army Hymn.
How patient Nature smiles at Fame!
The weeds that strewed the victor’s way,
Feed on his dust to shroud his name,
Green where his proudest towers decay.
A Roman Aqueduct.
It is likely that the language will shape itself by larger forces than phonography and dictionary-making. You may spade up the ocean as much as you like, and harrow it afterward if you can, but the moon will still lead the tides, and the winds will form their surface.—The Professor at the Breakfast-table.
Joy smiles in the fountain,
Health flows in the rills,
As their ribbons of silver
Unwind from the hills.
Song for a Temperance Dinner.
Know old Cambridge? Hope you do.
Born there? Don’t say so! I was too.
Parson Turrell’s Legacy.
Let each unhallowed cause that brings
The stern destroyer cease,
Thy flaming angel fold his wings
And seraphs whisper Peace!
Parting Hymn.
Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up. That which was a weed in one intelligence becomes a flower in the other. A flower, on the other hand, may dwindle down to a mere weed by the same change.—The Poet at the Breakfast-table.
None wept,—none pitied;—they who knelt
At morning by the despot’s throne
At evening dashed the laureled bust
And spurned the wreaths themselves had strewn.
The Dying Seneca.
Over the hill-sides the wild knell is tolling,
From their far hamlets the yeomanry come;
As through the storm-clouds the thunder-burst rolling,
Circles the beat of the mustering drum.
Lexington.
Poor conquered monarch! though that haughty glance
Still speaks thy courage unsubdued by time,
And in the grandeur of thy sullen tread
Lives the proud spirit of thy burning clime.
To a Caged Lion.
Questioning all things: Why her Lord had sent her?
What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her?
Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tormentor.
Iris, Her Book.
Rain me sweet odors on the air
And wheel me up my Indian chair,
And spread some book not overwise
Flat out before my sleepy eyes.
Midsummer.
Scenes of my youth! awake, its slumbering fire!
Ye winds of Memory, sweep the silent lyre!
Ray of the past, if yet thou canst appear,
Break through the clouds of Fancy’s waning year.
A Metrical Essay.
Trees as we see them, love them, adore them in the fields, where they are alive, holding their green sunshades over our heads, talking to us with their hundred thousand whispering tongues, looking down on us with that sweet meekness which belongs to huge but limited organisms.—The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table.
Unscathed, she treads the wreck-piled street
Whose narrow gaps afford
A pathway for her bleeding feet,
To seek her absent lord.
Agnes.
Virtue—the guide that men and nations own;
And Law—the bulwark that protects her throne;
And Health—to all its happiest charm that lends,—
These and their servants, man’s untiring friends.
A Modest Request.
Wan-visaged thing! thy virgin leaf
To me looks more than deadly pale,
Unknowing what may stain thee yet,—
A poem or a tale.
To a Blank Sheet of Paper.
“It ain’t jest the thing to grease your ex with ile o’ vitrul,” said the Member.—The Poet at the Breakfast-table.
Ye know not,—but the hour is nigh;
Ye will not heed the warning breath;
No vision strikes your clouded eye,
To break the sleep that wakes in death.
The Last Prophecy of Cassandra.
“By Zhorzhe!” as friend Sales is accustomed to cry,
You tell me they’re dead, but I know it’s a lie;
Is Jackson not President? What was’t you said?
It can’t be; you’re joking; what,—all of ’em dead?
Once More.