Fiercely some shall storm and swear, Beating breasts in black despair; Others murmur with a sigh You must melt or they will die; Painted words on empty lies, Grubs with wings like butterflies; Let them die, and welcome, too; Pray what better could they do?
Fare thee well, if years efface From thy heart love's burning trace, Keep, O keep that hallowed seat From the tread of vulgar feet; If the blue lips of the sea Wait with icy kiss for me, Let not thine forget that vow, Sealed how often, love, as now!
In his _Mechanism in Thought and Morals_, Doctor Holmes reveals one of the secrets of humorous writing. "The poet," he says, "sits down to his desk with an odd conceit in his brain; and presently his eyes filled with tears, his thought slides into the minor key, and his heart is full of sad and plaintive melodies. Or he goes to his work, saying--
"'To-night I would have tears;' and before he rises from his table he has written a burlesque, such as he might think fit to send to one of the comic papers, if these were not so commonly cemeteries of hilarity interspersed with cenotaphs of wit and humor. These strange hysterics of the intelligence which make us pass from weeping to laughter, and from laughter back again to weeping, must be familiar to every impressible nature; and all this is as automatic, involuntary, as entirely self-evolved by a hidden, organic process, as are the changing moods of the laughing and crying woman. The poet always recognizes a dictation _ab extra_; and we hardly think it a figure of speech when we talk of his inspiration."
Of Doctor Holmes' inimitable _vers d'occasion_ we select the following:
At the reception given to Harriet Beecher Stowe on her seventieth birthday, at Governor Claflin's beautiful summer residence in Newtonville, Doctor Holmes read the following witty and characteristic poem:
If every tongue that speaks her praise For whom I shape my tinkling phrase Were summoned to the table, The vocal chorus that would meet Of mingling accents harsh or sweet From every land and tribe would beat The polyglots of Babel.
Briton and Frenchman, Swede and Dane, Turk, Spaniard, Tartar of Ukraine, Hidalgo, Cossack, Cadi, High Dutchman and Low Dutchman, too, The Russian serf, the Polish Jew, Arab, Armenian and Mantchoo Would shout, "We know the lady."