Oliver Wendell Holmes

“ Where go the poet's lines?—
Answer, ye evening tapers!
Ye auburn locks, ye golden curls,
Speak from your folded papers! ”

“ These verses have always been printed in my collected poems, and as the best of them may bear a single reading, I allow them to appear, but in a less conspicuous position than the other productions. A chick, before his shell is off his back, is hardly a fair subject for severe criticism. If one has written anything worth preserving, his first efforts may be objects of interest and curiosity. ”

“ If the boy or youth had anything in him, there will probably be some sign of it in the midst of his imitative mediocrities and ambitious failures. These "first verses" of mine, written before I was sixteen, have little beyond a common academy boy's ordinary performance. Yet a kindly critic said there was one line which showed a poetical quality:—
"The boiling ocean trembled into calm."
One of these poems—the reader may guess which—won fair words from Thackeray. The Spectre Pig was a wicked suggestion which came into my head after reading Dana's Buccaneer. ”

“ A ROMAN AQUEDUCT FROM A BACHELOR'S PRIVATE JOURNAL LA GRISETTE OUR YANKEE GIRLS L'INCONNUE STANZAS LINES BY A CLERK THE PHILOSOPHER TO HIS LOVE THE POET'S LOT TO A BLANK SHEET OF PAPER TO THE PORTRAIT OF "A GENTLEMAN" IN THE ATHENAEUM GALLERY THE BALLAD OF THE OYSTERMAN A NOONTIDE LYRIC THE HOT SEASON A PORTRAIT AN EVENING THOUGHT. WRITTEN AT SEA THE WASP AND THE HORNET "QUI VIVE?" VERSES FROM THE OLDEST PORTFOLIO Nescit vox missa reverti.—Horat. ”