The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes

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Houghton, Mifflin, 1890 - 399 pages

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Page 125 - Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed, — Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil...
Page 134 - So the Deacon inquired of the village folk Where he could find the strongest oak, That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke — That was for spokes and floor and sills; He sent for lancewood to make the thills; The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees, The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the
Page 125 - Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll ! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
Page 125 - This is the ship of pearl, which poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main: The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings, In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings; And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.
Page 240 - While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand; 'When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; 'And when Rome falls — the World.
Page 134 - HAVE you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day, And then, of a sudden, it — ah, but stay...
Page 2 - They braced my aunt against a board, To make her straight and tall ; They laced her up, they starved her down, To make her light and small; They pinched her feet, they singed her hair, They screwed it up with pins; — Oh, never mortal suffered more In penance for her sins.

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