THIS is your month, the month of “perfect days,” Birds in full song and blossoms all ablaze. Nature herself your earliest welcome breathes, Spreads every leaflet, every bower inwreathes; Carpets her paths for your returning feet, Puts forth her best your coming steps to greet; And Heaven must surely find the earth in tune When […]

DEAR friends, left darkling in the long eclipse That veils the noonday,–you whose finger-tips A meaning in these ridgy leaves can find Where ours go stumbling, senseless, helpless, blind. This wreath of verse how dare I offer you To whom the garden’s choicest gifts are due? The hues of all its glowing beds are ours, […]

ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY 1887 FRIEND, whom thy fourscore winters leave more dear Than when life’s roseate summer on thy cheek Burned in the flush of manhood’s manliest year, Lonely, how lonely! is the snowy peak Thy feet have reached, and mine have climbed so near! Close on thy footsteps ‘mid the landscape drear I […]

Sent to “The Philological Circle” of Florence for its meeting in commemoration of Dante, January 27, 1881, the anniversary of his first condemnation. PROUD of her clustering spires, her new-built towers, Our Venice, stolen from the slumbering sea, A sister’s kindliest greeting wafts to thee, Rose of Val d’ Arno, queen of all its flowers! […]

MARCH 8, 1882 THE waves unbuild the wasting shore; Where mountains towered the billows sweep, Yet still their borrowed spoils restore, And build new empires from the deep. So while the floods of thought lay waste The proud domain of priestly creeds, Its heaven-appointed tides will haste To plant new homes for human needs. Be […]

TWICE had the mellowing sun of autumn crowned The hundredth circle of his yearly round, When, as we meet to-day, our fathers met: That joyous gathering who can e’er forget, When Harvard’s nurslings, scattered far and wide, Through mart and village, lake’s and ocean’s side, Came, with one impulse, one fraternal throng, And crowned the […]

PHI BETA KAPPA WENDELL PHILLIPS, ORATOR; CHARLES GODFREY LELAND, POET 1881 “THE Dutch have taken Holland,”–so the schoolboys used to say; The Dutch have taken Harvard,–no doubt of that to-day! For the Wendells were low Dutchmen, and all their vrows were Vans; And the Breitmanns are high Dutchmen, and here is honest Hans. Mynheers, you […]

BOSTON COMMON, DECEMBER 6, 1882 DURING THE TRANSIT OF VENUS I LOVE all sights of earth and skies, From flowers that glow to stars that shine; The comet and the penny show, All curious things, above, below, Hold each in turn my wandering eyes: I claim the Christian Pagan’s line, Humani nihil,–even so,– And is […]

PRELUDE TO “ILLUSTRATED POEMS” FULL well I know the frozen hand has come That smites the songs of grove and garden dumb, And chills sad autumn’s last chrysanthemum; Yet would I find one blossom, if I might, Ere the dark loom that weaves the robe of white Hides all the wrecks of summer out of […]

SUNG BY THE CONGREGATION TO THE TUNE OF TALLIS’S EVENING HYMN O’ERSHADOWED by the walls that climb, Piled up in air by living hands, A rock amid the waves of time, Our gray old house of worship stands. High o’er the pillared aisles we love The symbols of the past look down; Unharmed, unharming, throned […]

READ AT THE TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY Is it a weanling’s weakness for the past That in the stormy, rebel-breeding town, Swept clean of relics by the levelling blast, Still keeps our gray old chapel’s name of “King’s,” Still to its outworn symbols fondly clings,– Its unchurched mitres and its empty crown? Poor harmless emblems! All […]

(by supposition) An Hymn set forth to be sung by the Great Assembly at Newtown, [Mass.] Mo. 12. 1. 1636. [Written by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, eldest son of Rev. ABIEL HOLMES, eighth Pastor of the First Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.] LORD, Thou hast led us as of old Thine Arm led forth the chosen Race […]

HUDSON, WISCONSIN JUNE 7, 1877 ANGEL of love, for every grief Its soothing balm thy mercy brings, For every pang its healing leaf, For homeless want, thine outspread, wings. Enough for thee the pleading eye, The knitted brow of silent pain; The portals open to a sigh Without the clank of bolt or chain. Who […]

WHEN Advent dawns with lessening days, While earth awaits the angels’ hymn; When bare as branching coral sways In whistling winds each leafless limb; When spring is but a spendthrift’s dream, And summer’s wealth a wasted dower, Nor dews nor sunshine may redeem,– Then autumn coins his Golden Flower. Soft was the violet’s vernal hue, […]

I. FALLEN with autumn’s falling leaf Ere yet his summer’s noon was past, Our friend, our guide, our trusted chief,– What words can match a woe so vast! And whose the chartered claim to speak The sacred grief where all have part, Where sorrow saddens every cheek And broods in every aching heart? Yet Nature […]

ADDITIONAL VERSES WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF THE COMMITTEE FOR THE CONSTITUTIONAL CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION AT PHILADELPHIA 1887 LOOK our ransomed shores around, Peace and safety we have found! Welcome, friends who once were foes! Welcome, friends who once were foes, To all the conquering years have gained,– A nation’s rights, a race unchained! Children of […]

1798 THE FIRST VERSE OF THE SONG BY JOSEPH HOPKINSON “HAIL, Columbia! Happy land! Hail, ye heroes, heaven-born band, Who fought and bled in Freedom’s cause, Who fought and bled in Freedom’s cause, And when the storm of war was gone Enjoy’d the peace your valor won. Let independence be our boast, Ever mindful what […]

PROUDLY, beneath her glittering dome, Our three-hilled city greets the morn; Here Freedom found her virgin home,– The Bethlehem where her babe was born. The lordly roofs of traffic rise Amid the smoke of household fires; High o’er them in the peaceful skies Faith points to heaven her clustering spires. Can Freedom breathe if ignorance […]

WHEN evening’s shadowy fingers fold The flowers of every hue, Some shy, half-opened bud will hold Its drop of morning’s dew. Sweeter with every sunlit hour The trembling sphere has grown, Till all the fragrance of the flower Becomes at last its own. We that have sung perchance may find Our little meed of praise, […]

PRESENTED BY GEORGE W. CHILDS, OF PHILADELPHIA WELCOME, thrice welcome is thy silvery gleam, Thou long-imprisoned stream! Welcome the tinkle of thy crystal beads As plashing raindrops to the flowery meads, As summer’s breath to Avon’s whispering reeds! From rock-walled channels, drowned in rayless night, Leap forth to life and light; Wake from the darkness […]