For The Window In St. Margaret's In Memory Of A Son Of Archdeacon Farrar

Afar he sleeps whose name is graven here,
Where loving hearts his early doom deplore;
Youth, promise, virtue, all that made him dear
Heaven lent, earth borrowed, sorrowing to restore.

BOSTON, April 12, 1891.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

A member of the Fireside Poets, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was an American physician, poet, and polymath known for his witty and conversational style. His medical writings and advocacy for public hygiene were influential, while his poetry often drew from his professional experiences and observations. Holmes was also a founding contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, where many of his essays and poems were published.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

A Family Record

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Simple Poetry

The Shadows

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Simple Poetry

Voyage Of The Good Ship Union

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Simple Poetry

Parson Turell's Legacy Or, The President's Old Arm-Chair - A Mathematical Story

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

In Memory Of Charles Wentworth Upham, Jr.

He was all sunshine; in his face
The very soul of sweetness shone;
Fairest and gentlest of his race;
None like him we can call our own.

Something there was of one that died
In her fresh spring-time long ago,
Our first dear Mary, angel-eyed,
Whose smile it was a bliss to know.

Something of her whose love imparts
Such radiance to her day's decline,
We feel its twilight in our hearts
Bright as the earliest morning-shine.

Yet richer strains our eye could trace
That made our plainer mould more fair,
That curved the lip with happier grace,
That waved the soft and silken hair.

Dust unto dust! the lips are still
That only spoke to cheer and bless;
The folded hands lie white and chill
Unclasped from sorrow's last caress.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

In Memory Of John And Robert Ware

No mystic charm, no mortal art,
Can bid our loved companions stay;
The bands that clasp them to our heart
Snap in death's frost and fall apart;
Like shadows fading with the day,
They pass away.

The young are stricken in their pride,
The old, long tottering, faint and fall;
Master and scholar, side by side,
Through the dark portals silent glide,
That open in life's mouldering wall
And close on all.

Our friend's, our teacher's task was done,
When Mercy called him from on high;
A little cloud had dimmed the sun,
The saddening hours had just begun,
And darker days were drawing nigh:
'T was time to die.

A whiter soul, a fairer mind,
A life with purer course and aim,
A gentler eye, a voice more kind,
We may not look on eart...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

James Russell Lowell

1819-1891

Thou shouldst have sung the swan-song for the choir
That filled our groves with music till the day
Lit the last hilltop with its reddening fire,
And evening listened for thy lingering lay.

But thou hast found thy voice in realms afar
Where strains celestial blend their notes with thine;
Some cloudless sphere beneath a happier star
Welcomes the bright-winged spirit we resign.

How Nature mourns thee in the still retreat
Where passed in peace thy love-enchanted hours!
Where shall she find an eye like thine to greet
Spring's earliest footprints on her opening flowers?

Have the pale wayside weeds no fond regret
For him who read the secrets they enfold?
Shall the proud spangles of the field forget
The verse that lent new glory to th...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Last Look

W. W. Swain

Behold - not him we knew!
This was the prison which his soul looked through,
Tender, and brave, and true.

His voice no more is heard;
And his dead name - that dear familiar word -
Lies on our lips unstirred.

He spake with poet's tongue;
Living, for him the minstrel's lyre was strung:
He shall not die unsung.

Grief tried his love, and pain;
And the long bondage of his martyr-chain
Vexed his sweet soul, - in vain!

It felt life's surges break,
As, girt with stormy seas, his island lake,
Smiling while tempests wake.

How can we sorrow more?
Grieve not for him whose heart had gone before
To that untrodden shore!

Lo, through its leafy screen,
A gleam of sunlight on a ring of green,
Untrodd...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

On The Death Of President Garfield

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 prompts the burning phrase
That thrills the hushed and shrouded hall,
The loud lament, the sorrowing praise,
The silent tear that love lets fall.

In loftiest verse, in lowliest rhyme,
Shall strive unblamed the minstrel choir, - -
The singers of the new-born time,
And trembling age with outworn lyre.

No room for pride, no place for blame, -
We fling our blossoms on the grave,
Pale, - scentless, - faded, - all we cl...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Edward Everett - "Our First Citizen"

Winter's cold drift lies glistening o'er his breast;
For him no spring shall bid the leaf unfold
What Love could speak, by sudden grief oppressed,
What swiftly summoned Memory tell, is told.

Even as the bells, in one consenting chime,
Filled with their sweet vibrations all the air,
So joined all voices, in that mournful time,
His genius, wisdom, virtues, to declare.

What place is left for words of measured praise,
Till calm-eyed History, with her iron pen,
Grooves in the unchanging rock the final phrase
That shapes his image in the souls of men?

Yet while the echoes still repeat his name,
While countless tongues his full-orbed life rehearse,
Love, by his beating pulses taught, will claim
The breath of song, the tuneful throb of verse, -

Oliver Wendell Holmes