The green-haired maize, her silken tresses laid,
In soft luxuriance, on her harsh brocade;
The gourd that swells beneath her tossing plume;
The coarser wheat that rolls in lakes of bloom—
Its coral stems and milk-white flowers alive
With the wide murmurs of the scattered hive;
The glossy apple with the pencilled streak
Of morning painted on its southern cheek;
The pear's long necklace, strung with golden drops,
Arched, like the banyan, o'er its hasty props; &c.[1]
Many of the more laboured efforts of his Muse have an imposing eloquence—rather crude and unchastened, however, and to be ranked perhaps with what himself now calls his "questionable extravagances." To the class distinguished by tenderness of feeling, or a quietly pervading pathos, belong—with varying orders of merit—the touching stanzas entitled "Departed Days," the pensive record of "An Evening Thought," "From a Bachelor's Private Journal," "La Grisette," "The Last Reader," and "A Souvenir." How natural the exclamation in one for the first time conscious of a growing chill in the blood and calmness in the brain, and an ebbing of what was the sunny tide of youth:
Oh, when love's first, sweet, stolen kiss
Burned on my boyish brow.
Was that young forehead worn as this?
Was that flushed cheek as now?
Were that wild pulse and throbbing heart
Like these, which vainly strive,
In thankless strains of soulless art,
To dream themselves alive?[2]
And again this mournful recognition of life's inexorable onward march, and the "dislimning" of what memory most cherishes:
But, like a child in ocean's arms,
We strive against the stream,
Each moment farther from the shore,
Where life's young fountains gleam;
Each moment fainter wave the fields,
And wider rolls the sea;
The mist grows dark—the sun goes down—
Day breaks—and where are we?[3]
An interfusion of this pathetic vein with quaint humour is one of Dr. Holmes's most notable "qualities:" as in the stanzas called "The Last Leaf," where childhood depicts old age tottering through the streets—contrasting the shrivelled weakness of the decrepit man with the well-vouched tradition of his past comeliness and vigour:
But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan;
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
"They are gone."
