Martha (Died January 7, 1861)

Sexton! Martha's dead and gone;
Toll the bell! toll the bell!
Her weary hands their labor cease;
Good night, poor Martha, - sleep in peace!
Toll the bell!

Sexton! Martha's dead and gone;
Toll the bell! toll the bell!
For many a year has Martha said,
"I'm old and poor, - would I were dead!"
Toll the bell!

Sexton! Martha's dead and gone;
Toll the bell! toll the bell!
She'll bring no more, by day or night,
Her basket full of linen white.
Toll the bell!

Sexton! Martha's dead and gone;
Toll the bell! toll the bell!
'T is fitting she should lie below
A pure white sheet of drifted snow.
Toll the bell!

Sexton! Martha's dead and gone;
Toll the bell! toll the bell!
Sleep, Martha, sleep, to wake in light,
Where all the robes are stainless white.
Toll the bell!

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

Under The Washington Elm, Cambridge

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Simple Poetry

The Boys

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Simple Poetry

A Parting Health - To J. L. Motley

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Simple Poetry

The Peau De Chagrin Of State Street

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

Under The Violets

Her hands are cold; her face is white;
No more her pulses come and go;
Her eyes are shut to life and light; -
Fold the white vesture, snow on snow,
And lay her where the violets blow.

But not beneath a graven stone,
To plead for tears with alien eyes;
A slender cross of wood alone
Shall say, that here a maiden lies
In peace beneath the peaceful skies.

And gray old trees of hugest limb
Shall wheel their circling shadows round
To make the scorching sunlight dim
That drinks the greenness from the ground,
And drop their dead leaves on her mound.

When o'er their boughs the squirrels run,
And through their leaves the robins call,
And, ripening in the autumn sun,
The acorns and the chestnuts fall,
Doubt not that she will heed them all...

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

The Blue Closet

            THE DAMOZELS.

        Lady Alice, lady Louise,
        Between the wash of the tumbling seas
        We are ready to sing, if so ye please;
        So lay your long hands on the keys;
            Sing, Laudate pueri.

    And ever the great bell overhead
    Boom'd in the wind a knell for the dead,
    Though no one toll'd it, a knell for the dead.

            LADY LOUISE.

    Sister, let the measure swell
    Not too loud; for you sing not well
    If you drown the faint boom of the bell;
            He is weary, so am I.

    And ever the chevron overhead
    Flapped on the banner of the dead;
    (Was he asleep, or was he dead?)

            LADY ALICE.

    Alice the Queen, an...

William Morris

In Memoriam. - Colonel H. L. Miller,

Died at Hartford, December 30th, 1861.


Sorrow and Joy collude. One mansion hears
The children shouting o'er their Christmas Tree,
While in the next resound the widow's wail
And weeping of the fatherless. So walk
Sickness and health. One rounds the cheek at morn,
The other with a ghost-like movement glides
Unto the nightly couch, and lo! the wheels
Of life drive heavily, and all its springs
Revolving in mysterious mechanism
Are troubled.
                    And how slight the instrument
That sometimes sends the strong man to his tomb,
Revealing that the glory of his prime,
Is as the flower of grass.

                    Of this we thought
When looking on the face that lay so calm
And comely in its narrow coffin-bed,
Remembering how th...

Lydia Howard Sigourney

Those Evening Bells.

Those evening bells, those evening bells,
How many a tale their music tells, -
Of Yorkshire cakes and crumpets prime,
And letters only just in time!

The Muffin-boy has passed away,
The Postman gone - and I must pay,
For down below Deaf Mary dwells,
And does not hear those Evening Bells.^[1]

And so 'twill be when she is gone,
That tuneful peal will still ring on,
And other maids with timely yells
Forget to stay those Evening Bells.

Thomas Hood