The melody and grace of Goldsmith's line, but with a fresh local spirit, have not been more perfectly reproduced, nor with a more distinct revelation of a new spirit, than in this poem. It is retrospective and contemplative, but it is also full of the buoyancy of youth, of the consciousness of poetic skill, and of blithe anticipation. Its tender reminiscence and occasional fond elegiac strain are but clouds of the morning. Its literary form is exquisite, and its general impression is that of bright, elastic, confident power. It was by no means, however, a first work, nor was the poet unknown in his own home. But the "Metrical Essay" introduced him to a larger public, while the fugitive pieces already known were the assurance that the more important poem was not a happy chance, but the development of a quality already proved. Seven years before, in 1829, the year he graduated at Harvard, Holmes began to contribute to The Collegian, a college magazine. Two years later, in 1831, appeared the New England Magazine, in which the young writer, as he might himself say, took the road with his double team of verse and prose, holding the ribbons with unsurpassed lightness and grace and skill, now for two generations guiding those fleet and well-groomed coursers, which still show their heels to panting rivals, the prancing team behind which we have all driven and are still driving with constant and undiminished delight.
Mr. F. B. Sanborn, whose tribute to Holmes on his eightieth birthday shows how thorough was his research for that labor of love, tells us that his first contribution to the New England Magazine was published in the third or September number of the first year, 1831. It was a copy of verses of an unpromising title—"To an Insect". But that particular insect, seemingly the creature of a day, proved to be immortal, for it was the katydid, whose voice is perennial:
"Thou sayest an undisputed thing
In such a solemn way."
In the contributions of the young graduate the high spirits of a frolicsome fancy effervesce and sparkle. But their quality of a new literary tone and spirit is very evident. The ease and fun of these bright prolusions, without impudence or coarseness, the poetic touch and refinement, were as unmistakable as the brisk pungency of the gibe. The stately and scholarly Boston of Channing, Dana, Everett, and Ticknor might indeed have looked askance at the literary claims of such lines as these "Thoughts in Dejection" of a poet wondering if the path to Parnassus lay over Charlestown or Chelsea bridge:
"What is a poet's fame?
Sad hints about his reason,
And sadder praise from gazetteers,
To be returned in season.
"For him the future holds
No civic wreath above him;
Nor slated roof nor varnished chair,
Nor wife nor child to love him.
"Maid of the village inn,
Who workest woe on satin,
The grass in black, the graves in green,
The epitaph in Latin,
"Trust not to them who say
In stanzas they adore thee;
Oh, rather sleep in church-yard clay,
With maudlin cherubs o'er thee!"
The lines to the katydid, with "L'Inconnue"—
"Is thy name Mary, maiden fair?"—
published in the magazine at about the same time, disclose Holmes's natural melody and his fine instinct for literary form. But his lyrical fervor finds its most jubilant expression at this time in "Old Ironsides", written at the turning-point in the poet's life, when he had renounced the study of the law, and was deciding upon medicine as his profession. The proposal to destroy the frigate Constitution, fondly and familiarly known as "Old Ironsides", kindled a patriotic frenzy in the sensitive Boston boy, which burst forth into the noble lyric,
"Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!"
There had been no American poetry with a truer lilt of song than these early verses, and there has been none since. Two years later, in 1833, Holmes went to complete his medical studies in Paris, and the lines to a grisette—