Oliver Wendell Holmes

“ A writer is so like a lover! And a talk with the right listener is so like an arm-in-arm walk in the moonlight with the soft heartbeat just felt through the folds of muslin and broadcloth! But it takes very little to spoil everything for writer, talker, lover. There are a great many cruel things besides poverty that freeze the genial current of the soul, as the poet of the Elegy calls it. Fire can stand any wind, but is easily blown out, and then come smouldering and smoke, and profitless, slow combustion without the cheerful blaze which sheds light all round it. ”

“ There are two veils of language, hid beneath Whose sheltering folds, we dare to be ourselves; And not that other self which nods and smiles And babbles in our name; the one is Prayer, Lending its licensed freedom to the tongue That tells our sorrows and our sins to Heaven; The other, Verse, that throws its spangled web Around our naked speech and makes it bold. I, whose best prayer is silence; sitting dumb In the great temple where I nightly serve Him who is throned in light, have dared to claim The poet's franchise, though I may not hope To wear his garland ”

“ Then, as they call the roll of shining worlds, Sages of race unborn in accents new Shall count me with the Olympian ones of old, Whose glories kindle through the midnight sky Here glows the God of Battles; this recalls The Lord of Ocean, and yon far-off sphere The Sire of Him who gave his ancient name To the dim planet with the wondrous rings; Here flames the Queen of Beauty's silver lamp, And there the moon-girt orb of mighty Jove; But this, unseen through all earth's aeons past, A youth who watched beneath the western star Sought in the darkness, found, and showed to men ”

“ I should not dare to call myself a poet if I did not; for if there is anything that gives one a title to that name, it is that his inner nature is naked and is not ashamed. But there are many such things I shall put in words, not because they are personal, but because they are human, and are born of just such experiences as those who hear or read what I say are like to have had in greater or less measure. I find myself so much like other people that I often wonder at the coincidence. ”

“ With bridal chimes the echoes rang, And made the past our own. O blissful dream! Our nursery joys We know must have an end, But love and friendships broken toys May God's good angels mend! The cheering smile, the voice of mirth And laughter's gay surprise That please the children born of earth, Why deem that Heaven denies? Methinks in that refulgent sphere That knows not sun or moon, An earth-born saint might long to hear One verse of “Bonny Doon”; Or walking through the streets of gold In Heaven's unclouded light, His lips recall the song of old And hum “The sky is bright.” ”

“ Nothing can stir the massive pier but the shocks that shake the solid earth itself. When an earthquake thrills the planet, the massive turret shudders with the shuddering rocks on which it rests, but it pays no heed to the wildest tempest, and while the heavens are convulsed and shut from the eye of the far-seeing instrument it waits without a tremor for the blue sky to come back. It is the type of the true and steadfast man of the Roman poet, whose soul remains unmoved while the firmament cracks and tumbles about him. ”

“ 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 prone and grovelling in the dust like slaves ”

“ 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 ”

“ The Capitalist seemed to have an idea that he was like to be ruined in the matter of bandages,—small strips of worn linen which any old woman could have spared him from her rag-bag, but which, with that strange perversity which long habits of economy give to a good many elderly people, he seemed to think were as precious as if they had been turned into paper and stamped with promises to pay in thousands, from the national treasury. It was impossible to get this whim out of him, and the young doctor had tact enough to humor him in it. ”

“ Sometimes a sunlit sphere comes rolling by, And then we softly whisper,—can it be? And leaning toward the silvery orb, we try To hear the music of its murmuring sea; To catch, perchance, some flashing glimpse of green, Or breathe some wild-wood fragrance, wafted through The opening gates of pearl, that fold between The blinding splendors and the changeless blue. THE ANGEL. —Nay, sister, nay! a single healing leaf Plucked from the bough of yon twelve-fruited tree, Would soothe such anguish,—deeper stabbing grief Has pierced thy throbbing heart— THE FIRST SPIRIT. —Ah, woe is me! ”

“ When a person is sick, there is always something to be done for him, and done at once. If it is only to open or shut a window, if it is only to tell him to keep on doing just what he is doing already, it wants a man to bring his mind right down to the fact of the present case and its immediate needs. Now the present case, as the doctor sees it, is just exactly such a collection of paltry individual facts as never was before,—a snarl and tangle of special conditions which it is his business to wind as much thread out of as he can. ”

“ I like to see other people muddled now and then, because my own occasional dulness is relieved by a good solid background of stupidity in my neighbors.
—And the two revolve round each other?—said the Young Girl.
—Yes,—he answered,—two suns, a greater and a less, each shining, but with a different light, for the other.
—How charming! It must be so much pleasanter than to be alone in such a great empty space! I should think one would hardly care to shine if its light wasted itself in the monstrous solitude of the sky. Does not a single star seem very lonely to you up there? ”

“ Like Sindbad in the valley of precious stones, he wants to fill his pockets with diamonds, but, lo! there is a great ruby like a setting sun in its glory, and a sapphire that, like Bryant's blue gentian, seems to have dropped from the cerulean walls of heaven, and a nest of pearls that look as if they might be unhatched angel's eggs, and so he hardly knows what to seize, and tries for too many, and comes out of the enchanted valley with more gems than he can carry, and those that he lets fall by the wayside we call his poems. ”

“ 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 Goddess born of ocean's foam. These be thy gods, 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 worship with the many-headed throng? Is it the God that walked in Eden's grove In the cool hour to seek our guilty sire? The God who dealt with Abraham as the sons Of that old patriarch deal with other men? ”

“ I have my moods about such things as the Young Astronomer has, as we all have. There are times when the thought of becoming utterly nothing to the world we knew so well and loved so much is painful and oppressive; we gasp as if in a vacuum, missing the atmosphere of life we have so long been in the habit of breathing. Not the less are there moments when the aching need of repose comes over us and the requiescat in pace, heathen benediction as it is, sounds more sweetly in our ears than all the promises that Fame can hold out to us. ”

“ Every now and then a man who may be dull enough prevailingly has a passion of talk come over him which makes him eloquent and silences the rest. I have a great respect for these divine paroxysms, these half-inspired moments of influx when they seize one whom we had not counted among the luminaries of the social sphere. But the man who can—give us a fresh experience on anything that interests us overrides everybody else. A great peril escaped makes a great story-teller of a common person enough. ”

“ A poor poem or essay does not do much harm after all; nobody reads it who is like to be seriously hurt by it. But a sharp criticism with a drop of witty venom in it stings a young author almost to death, and makes an old one uncomfortable to no purpose. If it were my business to sit in judgment on my neighbors, I would try to be courteous, at least, to those who had done any good service, but, above all, I would handle tenderly those young authors who are coming before the public in the flutter of their first or early appearance, and are in the trembling delirium of stage-fright already. ”

“ An artist who works in marble or colors has them all to himself and his tribe, but the man who moulds his thought in verse has to employ the materials vulgarized by everybody's use, and glorify them by his handling. I don't know that you must break any bones in a poet's mechanism before his thought can dance in rhythm, but read your Milton and see what training, what patient labor, it took before he could shape our common speech into his majestic harmonies. ”

“ But if you don't leave your spun-sugar confectionery business once in a while, and come out among lusty men,—the bristly, pachydermatous fellows that hew out the highways for the material progress of society, and the broad-shouldered, out-of-door men that fight for the great prizes of life,—you will come to think that the spun-sugar business is the chief end of man, and begin to feel and look as if you believed yourself as much above common people as that personage of whom Tourgueneff says that “he had the air of his own statue erected by national subscription.” ”

“ 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—Hush! 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 ”

“ What is forgotten is this, that every real poet, even of the humblest grade, is an artist. Now I venture to say that any painter or sculptor of real genius, though he may do nothing more than paint flowers and fruit, or carve cameos, is considered a privileged person. It is recognized perfectly that to get his best work he must be insured the freedom from disturbances which the creative power absolutely demands, more absolutely perhaps in these slighter artists than in the great masters. His nerves must be steady for him to finish a rose-leaf or the fold of a nymph's drapery in his best manner ”

“ Are we less earthly than the chosen race? Are we more neighbors of the living God Than they who gathered manna every morn, Reaping where none had sown, and heard the voice Of him who met the Highest in the mount, And brought them tables, graven with His hand? Yet these must have their idol, brought their gold, That star-browed Apis might be god again; Yea, from their ears the women brake the rings That lent such splendors to the gypsy brown Of sunburnt cheeks,—what more could woman do To show her pious zeal? They went astray, But nature led them as it leads us all. ”

“ We fear power when we cannot master it; but just as far as we can master it, we make a slave and a beast of burden of it without hesitation. We cannot change the ebb and flow of the tides, or the course of the seasons, but we come as near it as we can. We dam out the ocean, we make roses bloom in winter and water freeze in summer. We have no more reverence for the sun than we have for a fish-tail gas-burner; we stare into his face with telescopes as at a ballet-dancer with opera-glasses; we pick his rays to pieces with prisms as if they were so many skeins of colored yarn ”

“ They will stand behind a table at a fair all day until they are ready to drop, dressed in their prettiest clothes and their sweetest smiles, and lay hands upon you, like—so many Lady Potiphars,—perfectly correct ones, of course,—to make you buy what you do not want, at prices which you cannot afford; all this as cheerfully as if it were not martyrdom to them as well as to you. Such is their love for all good objects, such their eagerness to sympathize with all their suffering fellow-creatures! But there is nothing they pity as they pity a lonely young man. ”

“ As we grow older we think more and more of old persons and of old things and places. As to old persons, it seems as if we never know how much they have to tell until we are old ourselves and they have been gone twenty or thirty years. Once in a while we come upon some survivor of his or her generation that we have overlooked, and feel as if we had recovered one of the lost books of Livy or fished up the golden candlestick from the ooze of the Tiber. So it was the other day after my reminiscences of the old gambrel-roofed house and its visitors. ”

“ It is rather dangerous to get the name of being one of these phenomenal manifestations, as one is expected to say something remarkable every time one opens one's mouth in company. It seems hard not to be able to ask for a piece of bread or a tumbler of water, without a sensation running round the table, as if one were an electric eel or a torpedo, and couldn't be touched without giving a shock. A fellow is n't all battery, is he? The idea that a Gymnotus can't swallow his worm without a coruscation of animal lightning is hard on that brilliant but sensational being. ”

“ Loving friends, With tears of trembling faith and choking sobs, And prayers to those who judge of mortal deeds, Wrapped this poor image in the cerement's fold That Isis and Osiris, friends of man, Might know their own and claim the ransomed soul An idol? Man was born to worship such! An idol is an image of his thought; Sometimes he carves it out of gleaming stone, And sometimes moulds it out of glittering gold, Or rounds it in a mighty frescoed dome, Or lifts it heavenward in a lofty spire, Or shapes it in a cunning frame of words, Or pays his priest to make it day by day ”

“ Helps himself to such juices of the bee as he likes best; the bee feeds on the choicest vegetable nectars, and he feeds on the bee. Lives either in the air or in the perfumed pavilion of the fairest and sweetest flowers. Think what tents the hollyhocks and the great lilies spread for him! And wherever he travels a band of music goes with him, for this hum which wanders by us is doubtless to him a vast and inspiring strain of melody.—I thought all this, while the Scarabee supposed I was studying the minute characters of the enigmatical specimen. ”

“ Not from the sad-eyed hermit's lonely cell, Not from the conclave where the holy men Glare on each other, as with angry eyes They battle for God's glory and their own, Till, sick of wordy strife, a show of hands Fixes the faith of ages yet unborn, Ah, not from these the listening soul can hear The Father's voice that speaks itself divine! Love must be still our Master; till we learn What he can teach us of a woman's heart, We know not His, whose love embraces all. ”

“ The works of other men live, but their personality dies out of their labors; the poet, who reproduces himself in his creation, as no other artist does or can, goes down to posterity with all his personality blended with whatever is imperishable in his song. We see nothing of the bees that built the honeycomb and stored it with its sweets, but we can trace the veining in the wings of insects that flitted through the forests which are now coal-beds, kept unchanging in the amber that holds them ”

“ She can make something that looks like a rose, more or less, but it takes all the forces of the universe to finish and sweeten that blossom in your button-hole; and you may be sure that when the orator's brain is in a flame, when the poet's heart is in a tumult, it is something mightier than he and his will that is dealing with him! ”

“ She is one of that great company of delicate, intelligent, emotional young creatures, who are waiting, like that sail I spoke of, for some breath of heaven to fill their white bosoms,—love, the right of every woman; religious emotion, sister of love, with the same passionate eyes, but cold, thin, bloodless hands,—some enthusiasm of humanity or divinity; and find that life offers them, instead, a seat on a wooden bench, a chain to fasten them to it, and a heavy oar to pull day and night. ”

“ Let us be true to our most subtle selves, We long to have our idols like the rest. Think! when the men of Israel had their God Encamped among them, talking with their chief, Leading them in the pillar of the cloud And watching o'er them in the shaft of fire, They still must have an image; still they longed For somewhat of substantial, solid form Whereon to hang their garlands, and to fix Their wandering thoughts, and gain a stronger hold For their uncertain faith, not yet assured If those same meteors of the day and night Were not mere exhalations of the soil. ”

“ I am often spoken of as a Coleopterist,—he said,—but I have no right to so comprehensive a name. The genus Scarabaeus is what I have chiefly confined myself to, and ought to have studied exclusively. The beetles proper are quite enough for the labor of one man's life. Call me a Scarabaeist if you will; if I can prove myself worthy of that name, my highest ambition will be more than satisfied.
I think, by way of compromise and convenience, I shall call him the Scarabee. He has come to look wonderfully like those creatures,—the beetles, I mean,—by being so much among them. ”

“ But is there not something of rest, of calm, in the thought of gently and gradually fading away out of human remembrance? What line have we written that was on a level with our conceptions? What page of ours that does not betray some weakness we would fain have left unrecorded? To become a classic and share the life of a language is to be ever open to criticisms, to comparisons, to the caprices of successive generations, to be called into court and stand a trial before a new jury, once or more than once in every century. ”