OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
As in the case of Hood, the fun in Holmes is always jostling the pathos. After some comic picture or grotesque phrase or quick thrust, the reader comes suddenly upon a stanza of perfect beauty of form with the gentlest touch of natural feeling. To illustrate this, it may be pardonable to quote even from so well known a poem as “The Last Leaf:”
I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches and all that
Are so queer.
The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest