352 



HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL. 



Come, take the book we love so well, 



And let us read and dream 

 \Vc see what e'er its pages tell, 



And sail an English stream. 



But the sail on an English stream was that 

 of a Berkshire Yankee boy, and the whole poem 

 breathes the sentiment of its closing stanxa : 



Though still the lark-voiced matins ring 



The world lias known so long ; 

 The wood thrush of the West shall sing 



Earth's last sweet even song ! 



More beautiful still is the Jyric that he read as 

 he dosed a lecture on Moore : 



Shine soft, ye trembling^ tears of light 



That strew the mourning skies; 

 Hushed in the silent dews of night 



The harp of Erin lies. 



What though her thousand years have past 



Of poets, saints, and kings 

 Her eciaoes only hear the last 



That swept those golden strings. 



Fling o'er his mound, ye starlit bowers, 



The balmiest wreaths ye wear, 

 Whose breath has lent your earth born flowers 



Heaven's own ambrosial air. 



Breathe, bird of night, thy softest tone 



By shadowy grove and rill.; 

 Thy song will soothe us while we own 



That his was sweeter still. 



Stay, pitying Time, thy foot for him 



Who gave thee swifter wings. 

 Nor let thine envious shadow dim 



The light his glory flings. 



If in his cheek unholy blood 



Burned for one youthful hour, 

 'Twas but the flushing of the bud 



That blooms a milk-white flower. 



Take him, kind mother, to thy breast, 



Who loved thy smiles so well, 

 And spread thy mantle o'er his rest 



Of rose and asphodel. 



The bark has sailed the midnight sea, 



The sea without a shore, 

 That waved its parting sign to thee 



" A health to thee, Tom Moore ! " 



Ami thine, long lingering on the strand, 



Its bright-hued streamers furled, 

 W^as loosed by age, with trembling hand, 



To seek the silent world. 



Not silent ! no, the radiant stars, 



Still singing as they shine, 

 Unheard through earth's imprisoning bars, 



Have voices sweet as thine. 



Wake, then, in happier realms above, 



The songs of bygone years, 

 Till angels learn those airs of love 



That ravished mortal ears! 



The opening and closing lines of the poem 

 with which he ended his lecture on Keats run : 



The wreath that star-crowned Shelley gave 



Is lying on thy Koman grave, 



Yet on its turf young April sets 



Her store of slender violets; 



Though all the gods their garlands shower, 



I, too, may l>ring one purple flower. 



Meek child of earth, thou wilt not shame 



The sweet dead poet's holy name ; 



The God of Music gave thee birth, 



Called from the crimson-spotted earth, 



Where, sobbing his young life away, 

 His own fair Hyaeinthus lay. 

 The hyacinth my garden gave 

 Shall lie upon that Roman grave ! 



Of Dr. Holmes as a medical lecturer, his suc- 

 cessor in that office speaks in a vein that makes 

 us glad he was Dr. Holmes's successor, as in this 

 fleeting life succession is the law. Dr. Thomas 

 Dwight gives us the picture of Holmes with 

 which we are least familiar. He says (writing in 

 " Scribner's Magazine ") : 



The amphitheater, the seats of which were at a 

 steep pitch, was entered by the students from above, 

 through two doors, one on each side, each of which 

 was approached by a steep stairway between narrow 

 walls. The doors were not usually opened until some 

 minutes after the hour. The space at the top of these 

 stairs was a scene of crowding, pushing, scuffling, and 

 shouting indescribable, till at last a spring shot hack 

 both bolts at once, and from each door a living ava- 

 lanche poured down the steep alleys with an irresisti- 

 ble rush that made the looker-on hold his breath. 

 How it happened that during many years no one was 

 killed, or even seriously injured, is incomprehensible. 

 The excitement of the fray having subsided, order 

 reigned until the entrance of the professor, whieli was 

 frequently the signal for applause. He came in with 

 a grave countenance. His shoulders were thrown 

 back and his face bent down. No one realized better 

 than he that he had no easy task before him. lie had 

 to teach a branch repulsive to some, difficult for all ; 

 and he had to teach it to a jaded class which was un- 

 fit to be taught anything. The wooden seats were 

 hard, the backs straight, and the air bad. The effect 

 of the last was alluded to by Dr. Holmes in his ad- 

 dress at the opening of the new school in 1883. " So, 

 when the class I was lecturing to was sitting in an* at- 

 mosphere once breathed already, after I had seen head 

 after head gently declining, and one pair of eyes after 

 another emptying themselves of intelligence, I have 

 said, inaudibly, with the considerate self-restraint of 

 Musidora's rural lover : Sleep on, dear youth ; this 

 does not mean that you are indolent or that I am 

 dull ; it is the partial coma of commencing asphyxia.' " 

 To make head against these odds he did his utmost 

 to adopt a sprightly manner, and let no opportunity 

 for a jest escape him. These would be received w r ith 

 quiet appreciation by the lower benches, and with up- 

 roarious demonstrations from the "mountain," where, 

 as in the French Assembly of the Revolution, the 

 noisiest spirits congregated. He gave his imagination 

 full play in comparisons often charming and always 

 quaint. None but Holmes could have compared the 

 microscopical coiled tube of a sweat gland to a fairy's 

 intestine. Medical readers will appreciate the apt- 

 ness of likening the mesentery to the shirt ruffles of a 

 preceding generation, which from a short line of at- 

 tachment expanded into yards of complicated folds. 

 He has compared the fibers connecting the two sym- 

 metrical halves of the brain to the band uniting the 

 Siamese twins. His lectures frequently contained aids 

 to memory which seemed perhaps childish to the 

 more advanced. I can almost hear him say, speaking 

 of the acromion process of the shoulder-blade, u l Now. 1 

 says the student, 'how shall I remember that hard 

 word? ' Let him think of the Acropolis, the highest 

 building in Athens, and remember that the acromion 

 is the highest point of the shoulder." 



All who have seen it will remember his demonstra- 

 tion of how the base of the skull, its weakest part, 

 may be broken by a fall on the top of the head. He 

 had a strong iron bar bent into a circle of some six- 

 inches in diameter, with a gap left between the ends 

 just large enough to be filled by a walnut. The ring 

 was then dropped to the fioor so as to strike on the 

 convexity just opposite to the walnut, which invaria- 

 bly was broken to pieces. 



The question of admitting women to the medical 



