Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (307 page)
Read Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) Online
Authors: Homer,William Shakespeare
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894)
I SAW him once before,
As he passed by the door;
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o’er the ground
5
With his cane.
They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
10
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.
But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan;
15
And shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
“They are gone.”
The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
20
In their bloom;
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.
My grandmamma has said —
25
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago —
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow.
30
But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff;
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
35
In his laugh.
I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
40
And the breeches and all that,
Are so queer!
And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
45
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894)
‘Man wants but little here below.’
LITTLE I ask; my wants are few;
I only wish a hut of stone
(A
very plain
brown stone will do)
That I may call my own; —
And close at hand is such a one,
5
In yonder street that fronts the sun.
Plain food is quite enough for me;
Three courses are as good as ten; —
If Nature can subsist on three,
Thank Heaven for three. Amen!
10
I always thought cold victual nice; —
My
choice
would be vanilla-ice.
I care not much for gold or land; —
Give me a mortgage here and there, —
Some good bank-stock, some note of hand,
15
Or trifling railroad share, —
I only ask that Fortune send
A
little
more than I shall spend.
Honors are silly toys, I know,
And titles are but empty names;
20
I would,
perhaps,
be Plenipo, —
But only near St. James;
I’m very sure I should not care
To fill our Gubernator’s chair.
Jewels are baubles; ’tis a sin
25
To care for such unfruitful things; —
One good-sized diamond in a pin, —
Some,
not so large,
in rings, —
A ruby, and a pearl, or so,
Will do for me; — I laugh at show.
30
My dame should dress in cheap attire
(Good, heavy silks are never dear); —
I own perhaps I
might
desire
Some shawls of true Cashmere, —
Some marrowy crapes of China silk,
35
Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk.
I would not have the horse I drive
So fast that folks must stop and stare;
An easy gait — two forty-five —
Suits me; I do not care; —
40
Perhaps, for just a
single spurt,
Some seconds less would do no hurt.
Of pictures, I should like to own
Titians and Raphaels three or four, —
I love so much their style and tone,
45
One Turner, and no more
(A landscape, — foreground golden dirt, —
The sunshine painted with a squirt).
Of books but few, — some fifty score
For daily use, and bound for wear;
50
The rest upon an upper floor; —
Some
little
luxury
there
Of red morocco’s gilded gleam
And vellum rich as country cream.
Busts, cameos, gems, — such things as these,
55
Which others often show for pride,
I
value for their power to please,
And selfish churls deride; —
One
Stradivarius, I confess,
Two
Meerschaums, I would fain possess.
60
Wealth’s wasteful tricks I will not learn,
Nor ape the glittering upstart fool; —
Shall not carved tables serve my turn,
But
all
must be of buhl?
Give grasping pomp its double share, —
65
I ask but
one
recumbent chair.
Thus humble let me live and die,
Nor long for Midas’ golden touch;
If Heaven more generous gifts deny,
I shall not miss them
much,
—
70
Too grateful for the blessing lent
Of simple tastes and mind content!
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
WHEN a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth’s aching breast
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west,
And the slave, where’er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb
To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime
Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time.
5
Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe,
When the travail of the Ages wrings earth’s systems to and fro;
At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start,
Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart,
And glad Truth’s yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future’s heart.
10
So the Evil’s triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill,
Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill,
And the slave, where’er he cowers, feels his sympathies with God
In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod,
Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler clod.
15
For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along,
Round the earth’s electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong;
Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity’s vast frame
Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame; —
In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim.
20
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,
And the choice goes by forever ‘twixt that darkness and that light.
25
Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand,
Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land?
Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet ’tis Truth alone is strong,
And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng
Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong.
30
Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see,
That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion’s sea;
Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry
Of those Crises, God’s stern winnowers, from whose feet earth’s chaff must fly;
Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by.
35
Careless seems the great Avenger; history’s pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness ‘twixt old systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, —
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
40
We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great,
Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate,
But the soul is still oracular; amid the market’s din,
List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within, —
‘They enslave their children’s children who make compromise with sin.’
45
Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood,
Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched the earth with blood,
Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day,
Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey; —
Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play?
50
Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and ’tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,
And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.
55
Count me o’er earth’s chosen heroes, — they were souls that stood alone,
While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone,
Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline
To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine,
By one man’s plain truth to manhood and to God’s supreme design.
60
By the light of burning heretics Christ’s bleeding feet I track,
Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back,
And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learned
One new word of that grand
Credo
which in prophet-hearts hath burned
Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heaven upturned.
65
For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the martyr stands,
On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands;
Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn,
While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return
To glean up the scattered ashes into History’s golden urn.
70
’Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves
Of a legendary virtue carved upon our father’s graves,
Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime; —
Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time?
Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make Plymouth Rock sublime?
75
They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts,
Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the Past’s;
But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free,
Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee
The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the sea.
80
They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires,
Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom’s new-lit altar-fires;
Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay,
From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away
To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to-day?
85
New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth;
Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,
Nor attempt the Future’s portal with the Past’s blood-rusted key.
90
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order