Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

“ What place is left for words of measured praise,
Till calm-eyed History, with her iron pen,
Grooves in the unchanging rock the final phrase
That shapes his images in the souls of men?
Yet while the echoes still repeat his name,
While countless tongues his full-orbed life rehearse,
Love, by his beating pulses taught, will claim
The breath of song, the tuneful throb of verse, —
Verse that, in ever-changing ebb and flow,
Moves, like the laboring heart, with rush and rest,
Or swings in solemn cadence, sad and slow,
Like the tired heaving of a grief-worn breast. ”

“ And dimmed the scholar's in the patriot's flame.
So shall we blazon on the shaft we raise, —
Telling our grief, our pride, to unborn years, —
"He who had lived the mark of all men's praise
Died with the tribute of a Nation's tears." ”

“ Each hour was equal to the charge it brought.
Too large his compass for his nicer skill
That weights the world of science grain by grain;
All realms of knowledge owned the mastering will
That claimed the franchise of its whole domain. ”