But in his delightful series of papers, "Over the Teacups," we mark the same brilliant flashes of wit, the same keen intuition, the same warmhearted sympathy with all phases of human nature, that our beloved Autocrat showed in the Breakfast Table chats. As Doctor Holmes himself says:
"In sketching the characters, I have tried to make just the difference one would naturally find in a breakfast and a tea table set."
Another volume of poems, "Before the Curfew," and a series of essays entitled "Our New Portfolio," were published soon after. The last poem of Doctor Holmes printed in the Atlantic Monthly was written in his eighty-fourth year and dedicated to the memory of Francis Parkman. Some of its verses, however, pay a loving tribute also to his old friends Prescott and Motley:
"One wrought the record of a royal pair
Who saw the great discoverer's sail unfurled,
Happy his more than regal prize to share,
The spoils, the wonders of the sunset world.
There, too, he found his theme; upreared anew
Our eyes beheld the vanished Aztec shrines,
And all the silver splendors of Peru
That lured the conqueror to her fatal mines.
Nor less remembered he who told the tale
Of empire wrested from the strangling sea;
Of Leyden's woe, that turned his readers pale,
The price of unborn freedom yet to be;
Who taught the new world what the old could teach;
Whose silent hero, peerless as our own,
By deeds that mocked the feeble breath of speech
Called up to life a State without a throne.
As year by year his tapestry unrolled,
What varied wealth its growing length displayed!
What long processions flamed in cloth of gold!
What stately forms their glowing robes arrayed!"
Contrasting with Prescott's and Motley's the subject of Parkman's histories, the poet says,
"Not such the scenes our later craftsman drew,
Not such the shapes his darker pattern held;
A deeper shadow lent its sombre hue,
A sadder tale his tragic task compelled.