The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes Part 60

LET me retrace the record of the years That made me what I am. A man most wise, But overworn with toil and bent with age, Sought me to be his scholar,-me, run wild From books and teachers,-kindled in my soul The love of knowledge; led me to his tower, Showed me the wonders of the midnight realm His hollow sceptre ruled, or seemed to rule, Taught me the mighty secrets of the spheres, Trained me to find the glimmering specks of light Beyond the unaided sense, and on my chart To string them one by one, in order due, As on a rosary a saint his beads.

I was his only scholar; I became The echo to his thought; whate'er he knew Was mine for asking; so from year to year W e wrought together, till there came a time When I, the learner, was the master half Of the twinned being in the dome-crowned tower.

Minds roll in paths like planets; they revolve, This in a larger, that a narrower ring, But round they come at last to that same phase, That selfsame light and shade they showed before.

I learned his annual and his monthly tale, His weekly axiom and his daily phrase, I felt them coming in the laden air, And watched them laboring up to vocal breath, Even as the first-born at his father's board Knows ere he speaks the too familiar jest Is on its way, by some mysterious sign Forewarned, the click before the striking bell.

He shrivelled as I spread my growing leaves, Till trust and reverence changed to pitying care; He lived for me in what he once had been, But I for him, a shadow, a defence, The guardian of his fame, his guide, his staff, Leaned on so long he fell if left alone.

I was his eye, his ear, his cunning hand, Love was my spur and longing after fame, But his the goading thorn of sleepless age That sees its shortening span, its lengthening shades, That clutches what it may with eager grasp, And drops at last with empty, outstretched hands.

All this he dreamed not. He would sit him down Thinking to work his problems as of old, And find the star he thought so plain a blur, The columned figures labyrinthine wilds Without my comment, blind and senseless scrawls That vexed him with their riddles; he would strive And struggle for a while, and then his eye Would lose its light, and over all his mind The cold gray mist would settle; and erelong The darkness fell, and I was left alone.

V.

ALONE

ALONE! no climber of an Alpine cliff, No Arctic venturer on the waveless sea, Feels the dread stillness round him as it chills The heart of him who leaves the slumbering earth To watch the silent worlds that crowd the sky.

Alone! And as the shepherd leaves his flock To feed upon the hillside, he meanwhile Finds converse in the warblings of the pipe Himself has fas.h.i.+oned for his vacant hour, So have I grown companion to myself, And to the wandering spirits of the air That smile and whisper round us in our dreams.

Thus have I learned to search if I may know The whence and why of all beneath the stars And all beyond them, and to weigh my life As in a balance,--poising good and ill Against each other,--asking of the Power That flung me forth among the whirling worlds, If I am heir to any inborn right, Or only as an atom of the dust That every wind may blow where'er it will.

VI.

QUESTIONING

I AM not humble; I was shown my place, Clad in such robes as Nature had at hand; Took what she gave, not chose; I know no shame, No fear for being simply what I am.

I am not proud, I hold my every breath At Nature's mercy. I am as a babe Borne in a giant's arms, he knows not where; Each several heart-beat, counted like the coin A miser reckons, is a special gift As from an unseen hand; if that withhold Its bounty for a moment, I am left A clod upon the earth to which I fall.

Something I find in me that well might claim The love of beings in a sphere above This doubtful twilight world of right and wrong; Something that shows me of the self-same clay That creeps or swims or flies in humblest form.

Had I been asked, before I left my bed Of shapeless dust, what clothing I would wear, I would have said, More angel and less worm; But for their sake who are even such as I, Of the same mingled blood, I would not choose To hate that meaner portion of myself Which makes me brother to the least of men.

I dare not be a coward with my lips Who dare to question all things in my soul; Some men may find their wisdom on their knees, Some p.r.o.ne and grovelling in the dust like slaves; Let the meek glowworm glisten in the dew; I ask to lift my taper to the sky As they who hold their lamps above their heads, Trusting the larger currents up aloft, Rather than crossing eddies round their breast, Threatening with every puff the flickering blaze.

My life shall be a challenge, not a truce!

This is my homage to the mightier powers, To ask my boldest question, undismayed By muttered threats that some hysteric sense Of wrong or insult will convulse the throne Where wisdom reigns supreme; and if I err, They all must err who have to feel their way As bats that fly at noon; for what are we But creatures of the night, dragged forth by day, Who needs must stumble, and with stammering steps Spell out their paths in syllables of pain?

Thou wilt not hold in scorn the child who dares Look up to Thee, the Father,--dares to ask More than thy wisdom answers. From thy hand The worlds were cast; yet every leaflet claims From that same hand its little s.h.i.+ning sphere Of star-lit dew; thine image, the great sun, Girt with his mantle of tempestuous flame, Glares in mid-heaven; but to his noon-tide blaze The slender violet lifts its lidless eye, And from his splendor steals its fairest hue, Its sweetest perfume from his scorching fire.

VII.

WORs.h.i.+P

FROM my lone turret as I look around O'er the green meadows to the ring of blue, From slope, from summit, and from half-hid vale The sky is stabbed with dagger-pointed spires, Their gilded symbols whirling in the wind, Their brazen tongues proclaiming to the world, "Here truth is sold, the only genuine ware; See that it has our trade-mark! You will buy Poison instead of food across the way, The lies of -----" this or that, each several name The standard's blazon and the battle-cry Of some true-gospel faction, and again The token of the Beast to all beside.

And grouped round each I see a huddling crowd Alike in all things save the words they use; In love, in longing, hate and fear the same.

Whom do we trust and serve? We speak of one And bow to many; Athens still would find The shrines of all she wors.h.i.+pped safe within Our tall barbarian temples, and the thrones That crowned Olympus mighty as of old.

The G.o.d of music rules the Sabbath choir; The lyric muse must leave the sacred nine To help us please the dilettante's ear; Plutus limps homeward with us, as we leave The portals of the temple where we knelt And listened while the G.o.d of eloquence (Hermes of ancient days, but now disguised In sable vestments) with that other G.o.d Somnus, the son of Erebus and Nox, Fights in unequal contest for our souls; The dreadful sovereign of the under world Still shakes his sceptre at us, and we hear The baying of the triple-throated hound; Eros is young as ever, and as fair The lovely G.o.ddess born of ocean's foam.

These be thy G.o.ds, O Israel! Who is he, The one ye name and tell us that ye serve, Whom ye would call me from my lonely tower To wors.h.i.+p with the many-headed throng?

Is it the G.o.d that walked in Eden's grove In the cool hour to seek our guilty sire?

The G.o.d who dealt with Abraham as the sons Of that old patriarch deal with other men?

The jealous G.o.d of Moses, one who feels An image as an insult, and is wroth With him who made it and his child unborn?

The G.o.d who plagued his people for the sin Of their adulterous king, beloved of him,-- The same who offers to a chosen few The right to praise him in eternal song While a vast shrieking world of endless woe Blends its dread chorus with their rapturous hymn?

Is this the G.o.d ye mean, or is it he Who heeds the sparrow's fall, whose loving heart Is as the pitying father's to his child, Whose lesson to his children is "Forgive,"

Whose plea for all, "They know not what they do"?

VIII.

MANHOOD

I CLAIM the right of knowing whom I serve, Else is my service idle; He that asks My homage asks it from a reasoning soul.

To crawl is not to wors.h.i.+p; we have learned A drill of eyelids, bended neck and knee, Hanging our prayers on hinges, till we ape The flexures of the many-jointed worm.

Asia has taught her Allahs and salaams To the world's children,-we have grown to men!

We who have rolled the sphere beneath our feet To find a virgin forest, as we lay The beams of our rude temple, first of all Must frame its doorway high enough for man To pa.s.s unstooping; knowing as we do That He who shaped us last of living forms Has long enough been served by creeping things, Reptiles that left their footprints in the sand Of old sea-margins that have turned to stone, And men who learned their ritual; we demand To know Him first, then trust Him and then love When we have found Him worthy of our love, Tried by our own poor hearts and not before; He must be truer than the truest friend, He must be tenderer than a woman's love, A father better than the best of sires; Kinder than she who bore us, though we sin Oftener than did the brother we are told We--poor ill-tempered mortals--must forgive, Though seven times sinning threescore times and ten.

This is the new world's gospel: Be ye men!

Try well the legends of the children's time; Ye are the chosen people, G.o.d has led Your steps across the desert of the deep As now across the desert of the sh.o.r.e; Mountains are cleft before you as the sea Before the wandering tribe of Israel's sons; Still onward rolls the thunderous caravan, Its coming printed on the western sky, A cloud by day, by night a pillared flame; Your prophets are a hundred unto one Of them of old who cried, "Thus saith the Lord;"

They told of cities that should fall in heaps, But yours of mightier cities that shall rise Where yet the lonely fishers spread their nets, Where hides the fox and hoots the midnight owl; The tree of knowledge in your garden grows Not single, but at every humble door; Its branches lend you their immortal food, That fills you with the sense of what ye are, No servants of an altar hewed and carved From senseless stone by craft of human hands, Rabbi, or dervish, brahmin, bishop, bonze, But masters of the charm with which they work To keep your hands from that forbidden tree!

Ye that have tasted that divinest fruit, Look on this world of yours with opened eyes!

Y e are as G.o.ds! Nay, makers of your G.o.ds,-- Each day ye break an image in your shrine And plant a fairer image where it stood Where is the Moloch of your fathers' creed, Whose fires of torment burned for span--long babes?

Fit object for a tender mother's love!

Why not? It was a bargain duly made For these same infants through the surety's act Intrusted with their all for earth and heaven, By Him who chose their guardian, knowing well His fitness for the task,--this, even this, Was the true doctrine only yesterday As thoughts are reckoned,--and to--day you hear In words that sound as if from human tongues Those monstrous, uncouth horrors of the past That blot the blue of heaven and shame the earth As would the saurians of the age of slime, Awaking from their stony sepulchres And wallowing hateful in the eye of day!

IX.

RIGHTS

WHAT am I but the creature Thou hast made?

What have I save the blessings Thou hast lent?

What hope I but thy mercy and thy love?

Who but myself shall cloud my soul with fear?

Whose hand protect me from myself but thine?

I claim the rights of weakness, I, the babe, Call on my sire to s.h.i.+eld me from the ills That still beset my path, not trying me With snares beyond my wisdom or my strength, He knowing I shall use them to my harm, And find a tenfold misery in the sense That in my childlike folly I have sprung The trap upon myself as vermin use, Drawn by the cunning bait to certain doom.

Who wrought the wondrous charm that leads us on To sweet perdition, but the selfsame power That set the fearful engine to destroy His wretched offspring (as the Rabbis tell), And hid its yawning jaws and treacherous springs In such a show of innocent sweet flowers It lured the sinless angels and they fell?

Ah! He who prayed the prayer of all mankind Summed in those few brief words the mightiest plea For erring souls before the courts of heaven,-- _Save us from being tempted_,--lest we fall!

If we are only as the potter's clay Made to be fas.h.i.+oned as the artist wills, And broken into shards if we offend The eye of Him who made us, it is well; Such love as the insensate lump of clay That spins upon the swift-revolving wheel Bears to the hand that shapes its growing form,-- Such love, no more, will be our hearts' return To the great Master-workman for his care,-- Or would be, save that this, our breathing clay, Is intertwined with fine innumerous threads That make it conscious in its framer's hand; And this He must remember who has filled These vessels with the deadly draught of life,-- Life, that means death to all it claims. Our love Must kindle in the ray that streams from heaven, A faint reflection of the light divine; The sun must warm the earth before the rose Can show her inmost heart-leaves to the sun.

He yields some fraction of the Maker's right Who gives the quivering nerve its sense of pain; Is there not something in the pleading eye Of the poor brute that suffers, which arraigns The law that bids it suffer? Has it not A claim for some remembrance in the book That fills its pages with the idle words Spoken of men? Or is it only clay, Bleeding and aching in the potter's hand, Yet all his own to treat it as He will And when He will to cast it at his feet, Shattered, dishonored, lost forevermore?

My dog loves me, but could he look beyond His earthly master, would his love extend To Him who--Hus.h.!.+ I will not doubt that He Is better than our fears, and will not wrong The least, the meanest of created things!

He would not trust me with the smallest orb That circles through the sky; He would not give A meteor to my guidance; would not leave The coloring of a cloudlet to my hand; He locks my beating heart beneath its bars And keeps the key himself; He measures out The draughts of vital breath that warm my blood, Winds up the springs of instinct which uncoil, Each in its season; ties me to my home, My race, my time, my nation, and my creed So closely that if I but slip my wrist Out of the band that cuts it to the bone, Men say, "He hath a devil;" He has lent All that I hold in trust, as unto one By reason of his weakness and his years Not fit to hold the smallest shred in fee Of those most common things he calls his own,-- And yet--my Rabbi tells me--He has left The care of that to which a million worlds Filled with unconscious life were less than naught, Has left that mighty universe, the Soul, To the weak guidance of our baby hands, Let the foul fiends have access at their will, Taking the shape of angels, to our hearts,-- Our hearts already poisoned through and through With the fierce virus of ancestral sin; Turned us adrift with our immortal charge, To wreck ourselves in gulfs of endless woe.

If what my Rabbi tells me is the truth Why did the choir of angels sing for joy?

Heaven must be compa.s.sed in a narrow s.p.a.ce, And offer more than room enough for all That pa.s.s its portals; but the under-world, The G.o.dless realm, the place where demons forge Their fiery darts and adamantine chains, Must swarm with ghosts that for a little while Had worn the garb of flesh, and being heirs Of all the dulness of their stolid sires, And all the erring instincts of their tribe, Nature's own teaching, rudiments of "sin,"

Fell headlong in the snare that could not fail To trap the wretched creatures shaped of clay And cursed with sense enough to lose their souls!