Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Volume 01: Earlier Poems (1830-1836)
    The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Volume 01: Earlier Poems (1830-1836)
    The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Volume 01: Earlier Poems (1830-1836)
    Ebook95 pages52 minutes

    The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Volume 01: Earlier Poems (1830-1836)

    By Oliver Wendell Holmes

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 27, 2013
    The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Volume 01: Earlier Poems (1830-1836)
    Author

    Oliver Wendell Holmes

    Oliver Wendell Holmes was an American physician, poet, and polymath based in Boston. A member of the Fireside Poets, he was acclaimed by his peers as one of the best writers of the day. His most famous prose works are the “Breakfast Table” series, which began with The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.

    Read more from Oliver Wendell Holmes

    Related to The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Volume 01

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      In Memory Of Derek Alton Walcott

      Mar 15, 2018

      1 Island traffic slows to a haltas screeching gulls reluctantto lift heavenwardcongregate like mourners in saltcrustedkelp, as the repellentnews spreads to colder shores: Sir Derek is no more.Bandwidths, clogged by streamingtributes, carry the pitcho

      2 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Sep 3, 2019

      And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons. —Ogden Nash, “Everybody Tells Me Everything,” The Face Is Familiar, 1941 Someone goes by wearing a

      3 min read

    • Article

      ‘And For That Minute A Blackbird Sang’

      Jul 28, 2021

      WHEN the poet Edward Thomas was leaving his home at Steep in Hampshire permanently in 1916, to go to war, he wrote of his love of the Shoulder of Mutton Hill in the nearby Ashford Hangers. In When First, he recalled the first time he had seen the hil

      4 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 4, 2018

      I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me. —Fred Allen I have always wondered, in reading travels, at the childish joy travellers felt at meeting people they knew, and their sense of loneliness when they did not, in

      4 min read

    • Article

      Alliteration’s Apt and Artful Aim

      Jan 31, 2019

      Every language has a certain aural spirit to it, an auditory fingerprint related to those sounds which constitute the melody and rhythm of any tongue. The post Alliteration’s Apt and Artful Aim appeared first on The Millions.

      14 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 1, 2022

      Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June’s long days, and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. —Adam Zagajewski, “Try to Praise the Mutilated World,” tr. by Clare C

      4 min read

    • Article

      Stop Hating on Adjectives!

      Jun 12, 2019

      A common admonition in creative writing pedagogy is, “Cut as many adjectives as possible.” I propose that this rule springs from mere prejudice. The post Stop Hating on Adjectives! appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      Hook, Line And Sinker

      Oct 18, 2018

      Hook, Line And Sinker
      4 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Joseph Brodsky

      May 12, 2020

      Two Poems by Joseph Brodsky
      7 min read

    • Article

      Tessa Castro

      Mar 9, 2022

      IN COMPETITION No 277 you were invited to write a poem called Morning Sounds. The entries were vivid: half domestic, half outdoor. Tim Lloyd observed that ‘A bin lorry approaching in reverse/Sounds like an asthmatic seal.’ Liz Piper remembered, durin

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Power And The Passion

      Sep 19, 2021

      The Power And The Passion
      4 min read

    • Article

      Ben Bulben

      Jan 21, 2022

      Ben Bulben
      3 min read

    • Article

      It’s A Small World

      Jul 3, 2023

      It’s A Small World
      12 min read

    • Article

      Poem Of The Week: Poetry For Supper By RS Thomas

      Oct 31, 2022

      ‘Listen, now, verse should be as naturalAs the small tuber that feeds on muck And grows slowly from obtuse soil To the white flower of immortal beauty.’ ‘Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer Said once about the long toil That goes like blood to the poe

      3 min read

    • Article

      Meet Your New Favorite Poet

      Feb 20, 2019

      Meet Your New Favorite Poet
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Watery Graveyard Revisited

      Apr 27, 2023

      A Watery Graveyard Revisited
      2 min read

    • Article

      Until The Sea Closed Over Us And The Light Was Gone

      Jul 1, 2020

      —Dante, Canto XXVI But if the truth is dreamed of toward the morning—El Paso Although it was really last summer’s song,all this summer Despacito played on as slower then I turned myself to gazeupon Juarez. The summer everything hurts my eyes, a dozen

      6 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Mar 4, 2024

      To Err Is Human; to Forgive, Supine —S. J. Perelman, Baby, It’s Cold Inside, 1970 You must know the bees have come early this year too: I see them visit aster, sweet Williams, bleeding hearts, and azalea blossoms hardy enough to not have crisped with

      3 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      May 1, 2020

      How on the Kama River the eye grows dark,when the cities stand on oaken knees. Disguising itself in a web, beard to beard,the burning pine grove runs, younger in the water. The water resisted one hundred and four oars,bearing them up and down to Kaza

      3 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Dec 1, 2021

      The light from the full moon lent a silky, glacial sheen to the towering front of the cloud, which stretched off to the horizon in both directions. I stood transfixed as it made its way down the street toward me at a little over the town’s speed limi

      3 min read

    • Article

      Jan Morris

      Jun 15, 2018

      I have always rather envied the poet Ovid, who was banished from Rome by the emperor Augustus, you may remember, to a remote place called Tomis on the shores of the Black Sea. There he died, ten years later, and his exile has gone into legend and int

      17 min read

    • Article

      Baltic Blast

      Sep 27, 2022

      Baltic Blast
      8 min read

    • Article

      BOOKS of the YEAR

      Nov 20, 2020

      BOOKS of the YEAR
      4 min read

    Reviews for The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Volume 01

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Volume 01 - Oliver Wendell Holmes

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. 1, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. 1 Earlier Poems (1830-1836)

      Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

      Release Date: September 30, 2004 [EBook #7388]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOLMES POETRY, VOL. 1 ***

      Produced by David Widger

      THE POETICAL WORKS

      OF

      OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

      [1893 three volume set]

      CONTENTS:

      TO MY READERS

      EARLIER POEMS (1830-1836).

           OLD IRONSIDES

           THE LAST LEAF

           THE CAMBRIDGE CHURCHYARD

           TO AN INSECT

           THE DILEMMA

           MY AUNT

           REFLECTIONS OF A PROUD PEDESTRIAN

           DAILY TRIALS, BY A SENSITIVE MAN

           EVENING, BY A TAILOR

           THE DORCHESTER GIANT

           TO THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

           THE COMET

           THE Music-GRINDERS

           THE TREADMILL SONG

           THE SEPTEMBER GALE

           THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS

           THE LAST READER

           POETRY: A METRICAL ESSAY

      TO MY READERS

      NAY, blame me not; I might have spared

      Your patience many a trivial verse,

      Yet these my earlier welcome shared,

      So, let the better shield the worse.

      And some might say, "Those ruder songs

      Had freshness which the new have lost;

      To spring the opening leaf belongs,

      The chestnut-burs await the frost."

      When those I wrote, my locks were brown,

      When these I write—ah, well a-day!

      The autumn thistle's silvery down

      Is not the purple bloom of May.

      Go, little book, whose pages hold

      Those garnered years in loving trust;

      How long before your blue and gold

      Shall fade and whiten in the dust?

      O sexton of the alcoved tomb,

      Where souls in leathern cerements lie,

      Tell me each living poet's doom!

      How long before his book shall die?

      It matters little, soon or late,

      A day, a month, a year, an age,—

      I read oblivion in its date,

      And Finis on its title-page.

      Before we sighed, our griefs were told;

      Before we smiled, our joys were sung;

      And all our passions shaped of old

      In accents lost to mortal tongue.

      In vain a fresher mould we seek,—

      Can all the varied phrases tell

      That Babel's wandering children speak

      How thrushes sing or lilacs smell?

      Caged in the poet's lonely heart,

      Love wastes unheard its tenderest tone;

      The soul that sings must dwell apart,

      Its inward melodies unknown.

      Deal gently with us, ye who read

      Our largest hope is unfulfilled,—

      The promise still outruns the deed,—

      The tower, but not the spire, we build.

      Our whitest pearl we never find;

      Our ripest fruit we never reach;

      The flowering moments of the mind

      Drop half their petals in our speech.

      These are my blossoms; if they wear

      One streak of morn or evening's glow,

      Accept them; but to me more fair

      The buds of song that never blow.

      April 8, 1862.

      EARLIER POEMS

      1830-1836 OLD IRONSIDES

      This was the popular name by which the frigate Constitution was known. The poem was first printed in the Boston Daily Advertiser, at the time when it was proposed to break up the old ship as unfit for service. I subjoin the paragraph which led to the writing of the poem. It is from the Advertiser of Tuesday, September 14, 1830:—

      "Old Ironsides.—It has been affirmed upon good authority that the Secretary of the Navy has recommended to the Board of Navy Commissioners to dispose of the frigate Constitution. Since it has been understood that such a step was in contemplation we have heard but one opinion expressed, and that in decided disapprobation of the measure. Such a national object of interest, so endeared to our national pride as Old Ironsides is, should never by any act of our government cease to belong to the Navy, so long as our country is to be found upon the map of nations. In England it was lately determined by the Admiralty to cut the Victory, a one-hundred gun ship (which it will be recollected bore the flag of Lord Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar,) down to a seventy-four, but so loud were the lamentations of the people upon the proposed measure that the intention was abandoned. We confidently anticipate that the Secretary of the Navy will

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1