Great men and famous women : a series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in history Volume 7 . all his literary work : Strive and thrive ! cry Speed—fight on, fare everThere as here ! OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES By Francis H. Underwood(I809-I894) ABRAHAM Lincoln, it is said, wasone day talking with a friendabout favorite poems, and repeatedwith deep feeling the well-knownclassic stanza: The mossy marbles restOn the lips that he has prest In their bloom;And ths names he loved to hearHave been carved for many a year On the tomb. That verse, he sai
Great men and famous women : a series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in history Volume 7 . all his literary work : Strive and thrive ! cry Speed—fight on, fare everThere as here ! OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES By Francis H. Underwood(I809-I894) ABRAHAM Lincoln, it is said, wasone day talking with a friendabout favorite poems, and repeatedwith deep feeling the well-knownclassic stanza: The mossy marbles restOn the lips that he has prest In their bloom;And ths names he loved to hearHave been carved for many a year On the tomb. That verse, he said, was writtenby a man by the name of the manner of referring to theauthorship was little flattering, thehonest admiration of the great-hearted President might atone for attorney in a country town inIllinois might well have been unac-quainted with the reputation of apoet away in Massachusetts, whoselines, perhaps, he had seen only inI the newspapers. No reader of feeling ever passedthat simple stanza unmoved. It is for all time not to be forgotten. Not aword could be changed any more than in The 3ugle Song. Its pathos is all. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 197 the more surprising in connection with the quaint humor in the description ofthe old man who is the subject of the poem. There is a dehcious Irish characterin this, as in many other pieces of Holmes, reminding us of the familiar coupletof Moore— Erin, the smile and the tear in thine eyesBlend like the rainbow that hangs in thy skies. The Last Leaf, from which the stanza is quoted, was written over fiftyyears ago, when the author was a little more than twenty-one. There are a fewothers of the same period which may have been considered trifles at first, butwhich seem to have slowly acquired consistence, so that while they are still mar-vels of airy grace, they are as firm as the carved foliage on a Gothic capital. Not many writers live long enough to see themselves recognized as classics ;the benign judgment is m
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectbiography, bookyear18
