The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes Part 9

COME back to your mother, ye children, for shame, Who have wandered like truants for riches or fame!

With a smile on her face, and a sprig in her cap, She calls you to feast from her bountiful lap.

Come out from your alleys, your courts, and your lanes, And breathe, like young eagles, the air of our plains; Take a whiff from our fields, and your excellent wives Will declare it 's all nonsense insuring your lives.

Come you of the law, who can talk, if you please, Till the man in the moon will allow it's a cheese, And leave "the old lady, that never tells lies,"

To sleep with her handkerchief over her eyes.

Ye healers of men, for a moment decline Your feats in the rhubarb and ipecac line; While you shut up your turnpike, your neighbors can go The old roundabout road to the regions below.

You clerk, on whose ears are a couple of pens, And whose head is an ant-hill of units and tens, Though Plato denies you, we welcome you still As a featherless biped, in spite of your quill.

Poor drudge of the city! how happy he feels, With the burs on his legs and the gra.s.s at his heels No dodger behind, his bandannas to share, No constable grumbling, "You must n't walk there!"

In yonder green meadow, to memory dear, He slaps a mosquito and brushes a tear; The dew-drops hang round him on blossoms and shoots, He breathes but one sigh for his youth and his boots.

There stands the old school-house, hard by the old church; That tree at its side had the flavor of birch; Oh, sweet were the days of his juvenile tricks, Though the prairie of youth had so many "big licks."

By the side of yon river he weeps and he slumps, The boots fill with water, as if they were pumps, Till, sated with rapture, he steals to his bed, With a glow in his heart and a cold in his head.

'T is past,--he is dreaming,--I see him again; The ledger returns as by legerdemain; His neckcloth is damp with an easterly flaw, And he holds in his fingers an omnibus straw.

He dreams the chill gust is a blossomy gale, That the straw is a rose from his dear native vale; And murmurs, unconscious of s.p.a.ce and of time, "A 1. Extra super. Ah, is n't it PRIME!"

Oh, what are the prizes we perish to win To the first little "s.h.i.+ner" we caught with a pin!

No soil upon earth is so dear to our eyes As the soil we first stirred in terrestrial pies!

Then come from all parties and parts to our feast; Though not at the "Astor," we'll give you at least A bite at an apple, a seat on the gra.s.s, And the best of old--water--at nothing a gla.s.s.

NUX POSTCOENATICA

I WAS sitting with my microscope, upon my parlor rug, With a very heavy quarto and a very lively bug; The true bug had been organized with only two antennae, But the humbug in the copperplate would have them twice as many.

And I thought, like Dr. Faustus, of the emptiness of art, How we take a fragment for the whole, and call the whole a part, When I heard a heavy footstep that was loud enough for two, And a man of forty entered, exclaiming, "How d' ye do?"

He was not a ghost, my visitor, but solid flesh and bone; He wore a Palo Alto hat, his weight was twenty stone; (It's odd how hats expand their brims as riper years invade, As if when life had reached its noon it wanted them for shade!)

I lost my focus,--dropped my book,--the bug, who was a flea, At once exploded, and commenced experiments on me.

They have a certain heartiness that frequently appalls,-- Those mediaeval gentlemen in semilunar smalls!

"My boy," he said, (colloquial ways,--the vast, broad-hatted man,) "Come dine with us on Thursday next,--you must, you know you can; We're going to have a roaring time, with lots of fun and noise, Distinguished guests, et cetera, the JUDGE, and all the boys."

Not so,--I said,--my temporal bones are showing pretty clear.

It 's time to stop,--just look and see that hair above this ear; My golden days are more than spent,--and, what is very strange, If these are real silver hairs, I'm getting lots of change.

Besides--my prospects--don't you know that people won't employ A man that wrongs his manliness by laughing like a boy?

And suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot, As if wisdom's old potato could not flourish at its root?

It's a very fine reflection, when you 're etching out a smile On a copperplate of faces that would stretch at least a mile, That, what with sneers from enemies and cheapening shrugs of friends, It will cost you all the earnings that a month of labor lends!

It's a vastly pleasing prospect, when you're s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g out a laugh, That your very next year's income is diminished by a half, And a little boy trips barefoot that Pegasus may go, And the baby's milk is watered that your Helicon may flow!

No;--the joke has been a good one,--but I'm getting fond of quiet, And I don't like deviations from my customary diet; So I think I will not go with you to hear the toasts and speeches, But stick to old Montgomery Place, and have some pig and peaches.

The fat man answered: Shut your mouth, and hear the genuine creed; The true essentials of a feast are only fun and feed; The force that wheels the planets round delights in spinning tops, And that young earthquake t' other day was great at shaking props.

I tell you what, philosopher, if all the longest heads That ever knocked their sinciputs in stretching on their beds Were round one great mahogany, I'd beat those fine old folks With twenty dishes, twenty fools, and twenty clever jokes!

Why, if Columbus should be there, the company would beg He'd show that little trick of his of balancing the egg!

Milton to Stilton would give in, and Solomon to Salmon, And Roger Bacon be a bore, and Francis Bacon gammon!

And as for all the "patronage" of all the clowns and boors That squint their little narrow eyes at any freak of yours, Do leave them to your prosier friends,--such fellows ought to die When rhubarb is so very scarce and ipecac so high!

And so I come,--like Lochinvar, to tread a single measure,-- To purchase with a loaf of bread a sugar-plum of pleasure, To enter for the cup of gla.s.s that's run for after dinner, Which yields a single sparkling draught, then breaks and cuts the winner.

Ah, that's the way delusion comes,--a gla.s.s of old Madeira, A pair of visual diaphragms revolved by Jane or Sarah, And down go vows and promises without the slightest question If eating words won't compromise the organs of digestion!

And yet, among my native shades, beside my nursing mother, Where every stranger seems a friend, and every friend a brother, I feel the old convivial glow (unaided) o'er me stealing,-- The warm, champagny, the old-particular brandy-punchy feeling.

We're all alike;--Vesuvius flings the scoriae from his fountain, But down they come in volleying rain back to the burning mountain; We leave, like those volcanic stones, our precious Alma Mater, But will keep dropping in again to see the dear old crater.

VERSES FOR AFTER-DINNER PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY, 1844

I WAS thinking last night, as I sat in the cars, With the charmingest prospect of cinders and stars, Next Thursday is--bless me!--how hard it will be, If that cannibal president calls upon me!

There is nothing on earth that he will not devour, From a tutor in seed to a freshman in flower; No sage is too gray, and no youth is too green, And you can't be too plump, though you're never too lean.

While others enlarge on the boiled and the roast, He serves a raw clergyman up with a toast, Or catches some doctor, quite tender and young, And basely insists on a bit of his tongue.

Poor victim, prepared for his cla.s.sical spit, With a stuffing of praise and a basting of wit, You may twitch at your collar and wrinkle your brow, But you're up on your legs, and you're in for it now.

Oh think of your friends,--they are waiting to hear Those jokes that are thought so remarkably queer; And all the Jack Horners of metrical buns Are prying and fingering to pick out the puns.

Those thoughts which, like chickens, will always thrive best When reared by the heat of the natural nest, Will perish if hatched from their embryo dream In the mist and the glow of convivial steam.

Oh pardon me, then, if I meekly retire, With a very small flash of ethereal fire; No rubbing will kindle your Lucifer match, If the fiz does not follow the primitive scratch.

Dear friends, who are listening so sweetly the while, With your lips double--reefed in a snug little smile, I leave you two fables, both drawn from the deep,-- The sh.e.l.ls you can drop, but the pearls you may keep.