The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes: With Illustrations

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Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1887 - 357 pages

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Page 161 - 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 2 - And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring, Let them smile, as I do now, At the old forsaken bough Where I cling.
Page 173 - Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue ; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide ; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he
Page 173 - That there wasn'ta chance for one to start, For the wheels were just as strong as the thills, And the floor was just as strong as the sills And the panels just as strong as the floor, And the whipple-tree neither less nor more, And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore. And spring and axle and hub encore.
Page 173 - Little of all we value here Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year Without both feeling and looking queer. In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth. This is a moral that runs at large; (Take it.
Page 1 - Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, Where knelt the vanquished foe, When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, And waves were white below, No more shall feel the victor's tread, Or know the conquered knee; — The harpies of the shore shall pluck The eagle of the sea ! Oh, better that her shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave ; Her thunders shook the mighty deep.
Page 141 - The wild flowers who will stoop to number ? A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them ; — Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them! Nay, grieve not for the dead alone Whose song has told their hearts...
Page 174 - You see, of course, if you're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once — All at once, and nothing first — Just as bubbles do when they burst.
Page 1 - Oh ! better that her shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave : Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave. Nail to the mast her holy flag ; Set every threadbare sail ; And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and the gale ! THE LAST LEAF.
Page 213 - There's a boy, we pretend, with a three-decker brain, That could harness a team with a logical chain ; When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire, We called him "The Justice,

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