Holmes was a conscientious worker, but he characteristically treated his mental processes in a joking way, and wrote to a friend: "I like nine tenths of any matter I study, but I do not like to _lick the plate_. If I did, I suppose I should be more of a man of science and find my brain tired oftener than I do." Again he wrote, "my nature is to snatch at all the fruits of knowledge and take a good bite out of the sunny side--after that let in the pigs." Despite these statements, Holmes worked steadily every year at his medical lectures. He was very particular about the exactness and finish of all that he wrote, and he was neither careless nor slipshod in anything. His life, while filled with steady, hard work, was a placid one, full of love and friendships, and he passed into his eightieth year with a young heart. He died in 1894, at the age of eighty-five, and was buried in Mt. Auburn cemetery not far from Longfellow and Lowell. POETRY.--In 1836 he published his first volume of verse. This contained his first widely known poem, _Old Ironsides_, a successful plea for saving the old battleship, _Constitution_, which had been ordered destroyed. With the exception of this poem and _The Last Leaf_, the volume is remarkable for little except the rollicking fun which we find in such favorites as _The Ballad of the Oysterman_ and _My Aunt_. This type of humor is shown in this simile from _The Ballad_:-- "Her hair drooped round her pallid cheeks, like seaweed on a clam," and in his description of his aunt:-- "Her waist is ampler than her life, For life is but a span." He continued to write verses until his death. Among the last poems which he wrote were memorials on the death of Lowell (1891) and Whittier (1892). As we search the three volumes of his verse, we find few serious poems of a high order. The best, and the one by which he himself wished to be remembered, is The _Chambered Nautilus_. No member of the New England group voiced higher ideals than we find in the noble closing stanza of this poem:-- "Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!" Probably _The Last Leaf_, which was such a favorite with Lincoln, would rank second. This poem is remarkable for preserving the reader's equilibrium between laughter and tears. Some lines from _The Voiceless_ are not likely to be soon forgotten:-- "A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them:-- Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them!"