The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1864-11-25
Eptniug StItsraph
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2& iseAI
THE BRYANT FESTIVAL.
Oliver wendeIl HOlmes' Poem

Oliver wendell Holmes Poem.
Or, Holmes poem, written for the Century
giub festival, will appear in the December num-
ReT Of the Atlantic Monthly. 1t is IS follows
pRYANTs sBVENTIETH BIRTHDAY.
ny OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
o even. handed Nature we confess
This life that men so honor, love- and bless,
Has filed thine Olden measure. Not the less
we count the precious seasons that remain;
Erike not the level Of the golden grain,
Bat heap Il high with years, that earth may gain
what heaven can lose--for heaven is rich in
song
Do not ali poets, dying, stu prolong
Their broken chants amid the seraph throng?
Where, blind no more, Ionia's bard is seen,
And Englands heavenly minstrel sits between
The Mantuan snd the wan checked Florentinef
This was the first sweet singer in the cage
OF our clOse-wOYen life. A newborn age
Claims in his vesper song It's heritage,
Spare US, oh, spare ms long our hearts desirel
Aoloch, who calls our children through the hrc,
Leaves us the gentle master OF the Tyre.
We count not on the dial of the sun
The hours, the minutes, that his sands have run I
Rather, as on those flowers that one BY one
Prom earliest dawn their ordered bloom display
TIL evenings planet with her guiding ray
Leads in the blind old mother OF the day.
We reckon by his songs, each song howor
The long, long daylight numbering hour py
Rsch bTeatbing sweetness like a bridal bower
His morning glory shall we e'er forget
His noontide's ful-bl0Tn lily coronot?
Ms evening primrose has not opened yeti
Nav. even If creeping Time should hide the skies
In midnight from his century-adsu eyes,
Dsrkened like his who sang of Paradise,
would not some hidden song bud open bright
As the resplendent cactus OF the night
rTh a.. "A. arHaN
Light
How can we praise the verse whose music flows
With solemn cadence and majestic close,
Pure as the dew that filters through the rose
How shall we thank him that in evil days
He fatered never nor for blame nor praise,
Nor hire, nor party, shamed his eRrlieT laysi
Bat as bis boy hood was Of manifest hue,
So TO his youth his manly years were true,
All dyed in royal purple through and through!
He for whose touch the Tyre of Heaven is strung
Needs not the 1attering toll Of mortal tongue;
Let not the singer grieve TO die unsung
Marbles forget tLoir message to mankind:
In his own verse the poet still we ind,
In his own page his memory lives enshrined,
As the fair cedar, fallen before the breeze,
Lies self-embamed amidst the mouldering trees
Poets like youngest children, never grow
Out of their mothers fOndneSs. Nature so
Holds their soft hands, and will not let them 20,
Till at the last they track with even feet
Der rhythmic footsteps, and their pulses beat
Twinned with her pulses, and their lips repeat
The secrets she has told them, as their own
Thus is the nmost soul of Nature known,
And the rapt minstrel shares her awful throne!
o lover of her mountains and her woods,
Her bridal chambers leafy solitudes,
Where Love himself with tremulous step in
trudes,
Her SHOWS fall harmless on thy sacred fire:
Par be the day that claims thy sounding Tyre
To Join the music Of the angel choir
Yet, since lie's amplest measure must be filed,
Since throbbng hearts must be forever stilled,
And all must fade that evening sunsets gild,
Grant, Father, ere he close the mortal eyes
That see Nations reeking sacrifice,
SB smoke may vanish from these blackened
skies
Then, when his summons comes, since come Il
must,
And, looking heavenward with unfaltering trust,
Ne wraps his drapery round him for the dust,
His last fond glance Will show him DER his head
The Northern fires beyond the zenith spread
In lambent glory, blue and white and red
The Southern cross without its bleeding load,
The milky way Of peace all freshly strewed,
And every white-throned star fixed in its los
abode.