What I Have Come For

I have come with my verses - I think I may claim
It is not the first time I have tried on the same.
They were puckered in rhyme, they were wrinkled in wit;
But your hearts were so large that they made them a fit.

I have come - not to tease you with more of my rhyme,
But to feel as I did in the blessed old time;
I want to hear him with the Brobdingnag laugh -
We count him at least as three men and a half.

I have come to meet judges so wise and so grand
That I shake in my shoes while they're shaking my hand;
And the prince among merchants who put back the crown
When they tried to enthrone him the King of the Town.

I have come to see George - Yes, I think there are four,
If they all were like these I could wish there were more.
I have come to see one whom we used to call "Jim,"
I want to see - oh, don't I want to see him?

I have come to grow young - on my word I declare
I have thought I detected a change in my hair!
One hour with "The Boys" will restore it to brown -
And a wrinkle or two I expect to rub down.

Yes, that's what I've come for, as all of us come;
When I meet the dear Boys I could wish I were dumb.
You asked me, you know, but it's spoiling the fun;
I have told what I came for; my ditty is done.

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 Farewell To Agassiz

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Simple Poetry

In The Quiet Days - An Old-Year Song

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Simple Poetry

A Poem - Dedication Of The Pittsfield Cemetery, September 9,1850

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Simple Poetry

Once More

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Simple Poetry

English

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Programme

Reader - gentle - if so be
Such still live, and live for me,
Will it please you to be told
What my tenscore pages hold?

Here are verses that in spite
Of myself I needs must write,
Like the wine that oozes first
When the unsqueezed grapes have burst.

Here are angry lines, "too hard!"
Says the soldier, battle-scarred.
Could I smile his scars away
I would blot the bitter lay,

Written with a knitted brow,
Read with placid wonder now.
Throbbed such passion in my heart?
Did his wounds once really smart?

Here are varied strains that sing
All the changes life can bring,
Songs when joyous friends have met,
Songs the mourner's tears have wet.

See the banquet's dead bouquet,
Fair and fragrant in its day;
Do they...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Smiling Listener

Precisely. I see it. You all want to say
That a tear is too sad and a laugh is too gay;
You could stand a faint smile, you could manage a sigh,
But you value your ribs, and you don't want to cry.

And why at our feast of the clasping of hands
Need we turn on the stream of our lachrymal glands?
Though we see the white breakers of age on our bow,
Let us take a good pull in the jolly-boat now!

It's hard if a fellow cannot feel content
When a banquet like this does n't cost him a cent,
When his goblet and plate he may empty at will,
And our kind Class Committee will settle the bill.

And here's your old friend, the identical bard
Who has rhymed and recited you verse by the yard
Since the days of the empire of Andrew the First
Till you 're full to the br...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

An Impromptu

Not premeditated

1853

The clock has struck noon; ere it thrice tell the hours
We shall meet round the table that blushes with flowers,
And I shall blush deeper with shame-driven blood
That I came to the banquet and brought not a bud.

Who cares that his verse is a beggar in art
If you see through its rags the full throb of his heart?
Who asks if his comrade is battered and tanned
When he feels his warm soul in the clasp of his hand?

No! be it an epic, or be it a line,
The Boys will all love it because it is mine;
I sung their last song on the morn of the day
That tore from their lives the last blossom of May.

It is not the sunset that glows in the wine,
But the smile that beams over it, makes it divine;
I scatter these drops, and b...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Old Cambridge

And can it be you've found a place
Within this consecrated space,
That makes so fine a show,
For one of Rip Van Winkle's race?
And is it really so?
Who wants an old receipted bill?
Who fishes in the Frog-pond still?
Who digs last year's potato hill? -
That's what he'd like to know!

And were it any spot on earth
Save this dear home that gave him birth
Some scores of years ago,
He had not come to spoil your mirth
And chill your festive glow;
But round his baby-nest he strays,
With tearful eye the scene surveys,
His heart unchanged by changing days,
That's what he'd have you know.

Can you whose eyes not yet are dim
Live o'er the buried past with him,
And see the roses blow
When white-haired men were Joe and Jim
Untouched ...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

A Poem For The Meeting Of The American Medical Association At New York, May 5, 1853

I hold a letter in my hand, -
A flattering letter, more's the pity, -
By some contriving junto planned,
And signed per order of Committee.
It touches every tenderest spot, -
My patriotic predilections,
My well-known-something - don't ask what, -
My poor old songs, my kind affections.

They make a feast on Thursday next,
And hope to make the feasters merry;
They own they're something more perplexed
For poets than for port and sherry.
They want the men of - (word torn out);
Our friends will come with anxious faces,
(To see our blankets off, no doubt,
And trot us out and show our paces.)

They hint that papers by the score
Are rather musty kind of rations, -
They don't exactly mean a bore,
But only trying to the patience;
That...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

For Whittier's Seventieth Birthday

I believe that the copies of verses I've spun,
Like Scheherezade's tales, are a thousand and one;
You remember the story, - those mornings in bed, -
'T was the turn of a copper, - a tale or a head.

A doom like Scheherezade's falls upon me
In a mandate as stern as the Sultan's decree
I'm a florist in verse, and what would people say
If I came to a banquet without my bouquet?

It is trying, no doubt, when the company knows
Just the look and the smell of each lily and rose,
The green of each leaf in the sprigs that I bring,
And the shape of the bunch and the knot of the string.

Yes, - "the style is the man," and the nib of one's pen
Makes the same mark at twenty, and threescore and ten;
It is so in all matters, if truth may be told;
Let one look at th...

Oliver Wendell Holmes