. The poets' New England. e of cleverness and hu-mor, spiced with sarcasm sometimes, and salted downwith wisdom at others, he succeeded in at random to any of his poems for occasions,and you will fall upon some choice bit, which will atonce amuse and show what a penetrating observer ofhuman foibles the merry doctor was. Take this, forexample: Sweet is the scene where genial friendship playsThe pleasing game of interchanging , grimalkin of the human heart,Is ever pliant to the masters art;Soothed with a word, she peacefully withdrawsAnd sheathes in velvet her ob
. The poets' New England. e of cleverness and hu-mor, spiced with sarcasm sometimes, and salted downwith wisdom at others, he succeeded in at random to any of his poems for occasions,and you will fall upon some choice bit, which will atonce amuse and show what a penetrating observer ofhuman foibles the merry doctor was. Take this, forexample: Sweet is the scene where genial friendship playsThe pleasing game of interchanging , grimalkin of the human heart,Is ever pliant to the masters art;Soothed with a word, she peacefully withdrawsAnd sheathes in velvet her obnoxious claws,And thrills the hand that smooths her glossy furWith the light tremor of her grateful purr. Or this piece of pure fun and nonsense, from AModest Request: The Speech. (The speaker, rising to be seen,Looks very red because so very green.)I rise—I rise—with unafiPected fear—(Louder!—Speak louder!—Who the deuce can hear.)I rise—I said—with undisguised dismay—Such are my feelings as I rise, I say!. Beacon Street House of HolmesFrom a photograph by Ethel C. Brown THE POETS NEW ENGLAND 323 Quite unprepared to face this learned throng,Already gorged with eloquence and song;Around my view are ranged on either handThe genius, wisdom, virtue of the land;Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed,Close at my elbow stir their lemonade. It is safe to say that if all the records of nineteenth-century New England were swept away, and fromthe ruins should be excavated a copy of Holmesspoems, it would furnish all that would be needed inthe way of material for the reconstruction of a pic-ture showing the genial manners and customs of thereligion-enfranchised descendants of the Puritans. Besides these larger aspects of social life, one willfind an almost complete record of the formal and so-cial life of Harvard College, from the time of hisgraduation to his death. Constantly he was calledon for poems, both at the formal ceremonies and atthe annual meetings of his
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