The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes Part 13

Yet in opinions look not always back,-- Your wake is nothing, mind the coming track; Leave what you've done for what you have to do; Don't be "consistent," but be simply true.

Don't catch the fidgets; you have found your place Just in the focus of a nervous race, Fretful to change and rabid to discuss, Full of excitements, always in a fuss.

Think of the patriarchs; then compare as men These lean-cheeked maniacs of the tongue and pen!

Run, if you like, but try to keep your breath; Work like a man, but don't be worked to death; And with new notions,--let me change the rule,-- Don't strike the iron till it 's slightly cool.

Choose well your set; our feeble nature seeks The aid of clubs, the countenance of cliques; And with this object settle first of all Your weight of metal and your size of ball.

Track not the steps of such as hold you cheap, Too mean to prize, though good enough to keep; The "real, genuine, no-mistake Tom Thumbs"

Are little people fed on great men's crumbs.

Yet keep no followers of that hateful brood That basely mingles with its wholesome food The tumid reptile, which, the poet said, Doth wear a precious jewel in his head.

If the wild filly, "Progress," thou wouldst ride, Have young companions ever at thy side; But wouldst thou stride the stanch old mare, "Success,"

Go with thine elders, though they please thee less.

Shun such as lounge through afternoons and eves, And on thy dial write, "Beware of thieves!"

Felon of minutes, never taught to feel The worth of treasures which thy fingers steal, Pick my left pocket of its silver dime, But spare the right,--it holds my golden time!

Does praise delight thee? Choose some _ultra_ side,-- A sure old recipe, and often tried; Be its apostle, congressman, or bard, Spokesman or jokesman, only drive it hard; But know the forfeit which thy choice abides, For on two wheels the poor reformer rides,-- One black with epithets the _anti_ throws, One white with flattery painted by the pros.

Though books on MANNERS are not out of print, An honest tongue may drop a harmless hint.

Stop not, unthinking, every friend you meet, To spin your wordy fabric in the street; While you are emptying your colloquial pack, The fiend Lumbago jumps upon his back.

Nor cloud his features with the unwelcome tale Of how he looks, if haply thin and pale; Health is a subject for his child, his wife, And the rude office that insures his life.

Look in his face, to meet thy neighbor's soul, Not on his garments, to detect a hole; "How to observe" is what thy pages show, Pride of thy s.e.x, Miss Harriet Martineau!

Oh, what a precious book the one would be That taught observers what they 're NOT to see!

I tell in verse--'t were better done in prose-- One curious trick that everybody knows; Once form this habit, and it's very strange How long it sticks, how hard it is to change.

Two friendly people, both disposed to smile, Who meet, like others, every little while, Instead of pa.s.sing with a pleasant bow, And "How d' ye do?" or "How 's your uncle now?"

Impelled by feelings in their nature kind, But slightly weak and somewhat undefined, Rush at each other, make a sudden stand, Begin to talk, expatiate, and expand; Each looks quite radiant, seems extremely struck, Their meeting so was such a piece of luck; Each thinks the other thinks he 's greatly pleased To screw the vice in which they both are squeezed; So there they talk, in dust, or mud, or snow, Both bored to death, and both afraid to go!

Your hat once lifted, do not hang your fire, Nor, like slow Ajax, fighting still, retire; When your old castor on your crown you clap, Go off; you've mounted your percussion cap.

Some words on LANGUAGE may be well applied, And take them kindly, though they touch your pride.

Words lead to things; a scale is more precise,-- Coa.r.s.e speech, bad grammar, swearing, drinking, vice.

Our cold Northeaster's icy fetter clips The native freedom of the Saxon lips; See the brown peasant of the plastic South, How all his pa.s.sions play about his mouth!

With us, the feature that transmits the soul, A frozen, pa.s.sive, palsied breathing-hole.

The crampy shackles of the ploughboy's walk Tie the small muscles when he strives to talk; Not all the pumice of the polished town Can smooth this roughness of the barnyard down; Rich, honored, t.i.tled, he betrays his race By this one mark,--he's awkward in the face;-- Nature's rude impress, long before he knew The sunny street that holds the sifted few.

It can't be helped, though, if we're taken young, We gain some freedom of the lips and tongue; But school and college often try in vain To break the padlock of our boyhood's chain One stubborn word will prove this axiom true,-- No quondam rustic can enunciate view.

A few brief stanzas may be well employed To speak of errors we can all avoid.

Learning condemns beyond the reach of hope The careless lips that speak of so'ap for soap; Her edict exiles from her fair abode The clownish voice that utters ro'ad for road Less stern to him who calls his coat a co'at, And steers his boat, believing it a bo'at, She pardoned one, our cla.s.sic city's boast, Who said at Cambridge mo'st instead of most, But knit her brows and stamped her angry foot To hear a Teacher call a root a ro'ot.

Once more: speak clearly, if you speak at all; Carve every word before you let it fall; Don't, like a lecturer or dramatic star, Try over-hard to roll the British R; Do put your accents in the proper spot; Don't,--let me beg you,--don't say "How?" for "What?"

And when you stick on conversation's burs, Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful _urs_.

From little matters let us pa.s.s to less, And lightly touch the mysteries of DRESS; The outward forms the inner man reveal,-- We guess the pulp before we cut the peel.

I leave the broadcloth,--coats and all the rest,-- The dangerous waistcoat, called by c.o.c.kneys "vest,"

The things named "pants" in certain doc.u.ments, A word not made for gentlemen, but "gents;"

One single precept might the whole condense Be sure your tailor is a man of sense; But add a little care, a decent pride, And always err upon the sober side.

Three pairs of boots one pair of feet demands, If polished daily by the owner's hands; If the dark menial's visit save from this, Have twice the number,--for he 'll sometimes miss.

One pair for critics of the nicer s.e.x, Close in the instep's clinging circ.u.mflex, Long, narrow, light; the Gallic boot of love, A kind of cross between a boot and glove.

Compact, but easy, strong, substantial, square, Let native art compile the medium pair.

The third remains, and let your tasteful skill Here show some relics of affection still; Let no stiff cowhide, reeking from the tan, No rough caoutchoue, no deformed brogan, Disgrace the tapering outline of your feet, Though yellow torrents gurgle through the street.

Wear seemly gloves; not black, nor yet too light, And least of all the pair that once was white; Let the dead party where you told your loves Bury in peace its dead bouquets and gloves; Shave like the goat, if so your fancy bids, But be a parent,--don't neglect your kids.

Have a good hat; the secret of your looks Lives with the beaver in Canadian brooks; Virtue may flourish in an old cravat, But man and nature scorn the shocking hat.

Does beauty slight you from her gay abodes?

Like bright Apollo, you must take to Rhoades,-- Mount the new castor,--ice itself will melt; Boots, gloves, may fail; the hat is always felt.

Be shy of breastpins; plain, well-ironed white, With small pearl b.u.t.tons,--two of them in sight,-- Is always genuine, while your gems may pa.s.s, Though real diamonds, for ign.o.ble gla.s.s.

But spurn those paltry Cisatlantic lies That round his breast the shabby rustic ties; Breathe not the name profaned to hallow things The indignant laundress blushes when she brings!

Our freeborn race, averse to every check, Has tossed the yoke of Europe from its _neck_; From the green prairie to the sea-girt town, The whole wide nation turns its collars down.

The stately neck is manhood's manliest part; It takes the life-blood freshest from the heart.

With short, curled ringlets close around it spread, How light and strong it lifts the Grecian head!

Thine, fair Erechtheus of Minerva's wall; Or thine, young athlete of the Louvre's hall, Smooth as the pillar flas.h.i.+ng in the sun That filled the arena where thy wreaths were won, Firm as the band that clasps the antlered spoil Strained in the winding anaconda's coil I spare the contrast; it were only kind To be a little, nay, intensely blind.

Choose for yourself: I know it cuts your ear; I know the points will sometimes interfere; I know that often, like the filial John, Whom sleep surprised with half his drapery on, You show your features to the astonished town With one side standing and the other down;-- But, O, my friend! my favorite fellow-man!

If Nature made you on her modern plan, Sooner than wander with your windpipe bare,-- The fruit of Eden ripening in the air,-- With that lean head-stalk, that protruding chin, Wear standing collars, were they made of tin!

And have a neckcloth--by the throat of Jove!-- Cut from the funnel of a rusty stove!

The long-drawn lesson narrows to its close, Chill, slender, slow, the dwindled current flows; Tired of the ripples on its feeble springs, Once more the Muse unfolds her upward wings.

Land of my birth, with this unhallowed tongue, Thy hopes, thy dangers, I perchance had sung; But who shall sing, in brutal disregard Of all the essentials of the "native bard"?

Lake, sea, sh.o.r.e, prairie, forest, mountain, fall, His eye omnivorous must devour them all; The tallest summits and the broadest tides His foot must compa.s.s with its giant strides, Where Ocean thunders, where Missouri rolls, And tread at once the tropics and the poles; His food all forms of earth, fire, water, air, His home all s.p.a.ce, his birthplace everywhere.

Some grave compatriot, having seen perhaps The pictured page that goes in Worcester's Maps, And, read in earnest what was said in jest, "Who drives fat oxen"--please to add the rest,-- Sprung the odd notion that the poet's dreams Grow in the ratio of his hills and streams; And hence insisted that the aforesaid "bard,"

Pink of the future, fancy's pattern-card, The babe of nature in the "giant West,"

Must be of course her biggest and her best.

Oh! when at length the expected bard shall come, Land of our pride, to strike thine echoes dumb, (And many a voice exclaims in prose and rhyme, It's getting late, and he's behind his time,) When all thy mountains clap their hands in joy, And all thy cataracts thunder, "That 's the boy,"-- Say if with him the reign of song shall end, And Heaven declare its final dividend!

Becalm, dear brother! whose impa.s.sioned strain Comes from an alley watered by a drain; The little Mincio, dribbling to the Po, Beats all the epics of the Hoang Ho; If loved in earnest by the tuneful maid, Don't mind their nonsense,--never be afraid!

The nurse of poets feeds her winged brood By common firesides, on familiar food; In a low hamlet, by a narrow stream, Where bovine rustics used to doze and dream, She filled young William's fiery fancy full, While old John Shakespeare talked of beeves and wool!

No Alpine needle, with its climbing spire, Brings down for mortals the Promethean fire, If careless nature have forgot to frame An altar worthy of the sacred flame.

Unblest by any save the goatherd's lines, Mont Blanc rose soaring through his "sea of pines;"

In vain the rivers from their ice-caves flash; No hymn salutes them but the Ranz des Vaches, Till lazy Coleridge, by the morning's light, Gazed for a moment on the fields of white, And lo! the glaciers found at length a tongue, Mont Blanc was vocal, and Chamouni sung!

Children of wealth or want, to each is given One spot of green, and all the blue of heaven!

Enough if these their outward shows impart; The rest is thine,--the scenery of the heart.

If pa.s.sion's hectic in thy stanzas glow, Thy heart's best life-blood ebbing as they flow; If with thy verse thy strength and bloom distil, Drained by the pulses of the fevered thrill; If sound's sweet effluence polarize thy brain, And thoughts turn crystals in thy fluid strain,-- Nor rolling ocean, nor the prairie's bloom, Nor streaming cliffs, nor rayless cavern's gloom, Need'st thou, young poet, to inform thy line; Thy own broad signet stamps thy song divine!

Let others gaze where silvery streams are rolled, And chase the rainbow for its cup of gold; To thee all landscapes wear a heavenly dye, Changed in the glance of thy prismatic eye; Nature evoked thee in sublimer throes, For thee her inmost Arethusa flows,-- The mighty mother's living depths are stirred,-- Thou art the starred Osiris of the herd!

A few brief lines; they touch on solemn chords, And hearts may leap to hear their honest words; Yet, ere the jarring bugle-blast is blown, The softer lyre shall breathe its soothing tone.

New England! proudly may thy children claim Their honored birthright by its humblest name Cold are thy skies, but, ever fresh and clear, No rank malaria stains thine atmosphere; No fungous weeds invade thy scanty soil, Scarred by the ploughshares of unslumbering toil.

Long may the doctrines by thy sages taught, Raised from the quarries where their sires have wrought, Be like the granite of thy rock-ribbed land,-- As slow to rear, as obdurate to stand; And as the ice that leaves thy crystal mine Chills the fierce alcohol in the Creole's wine, So may the doctrines of thy sober school Keep the hot theories of thy neighbors cool!