The Poet at the Breakfast-TableHolmes, Oliver Wendell
General
The Poet at the Breakfast-Table
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
American fiction -- 19th century; Conversation -- Fiction; Poetry
ago, is to-day at Oxford? Who was Mistress Holden, that she should be
blessed among women by having her name spoken gratefully and the
little edifice she caused to be erected preserved as her monument from
generation to generation? All these possibilities, the lust of the eye,
the lust of the flesh, the pride of life; the tears of grateful orphans
by the gallon; the prayers of Westminster Assembly's Catechism divines
by the thousand; the masses of priests by the century;--all these
things, and more if more there be that the imagination of a lover of
gold is likely to range over, the miser hears and sees and feels and
hugs and enjoys as he paddles with his lean hands among the sliding,
shining, ringing, innocent-looking bits of yellow metal, toying with
them as the lion-tamer handles the great carnivorous monster, whose
might and whose terrors are child's play to the latent forces and power
of harm-doing of the glittering counters played with in the great game
between angels and devils.
I have seen a good deal of misers, and I think I understand them as
well as most persons do. But the Capitalist's economy in rags and his
liberality to the young doctor are very oddly contrasted with each
other. I should not be surprised at any time to hear that he had endowed
a scholarship or professorship or built a college dormitory, in spite of
his curious parsimony in old linen.
I do not know where our Young Astronomer got the notions that he
expresses so freely in the lines that follow. I think the statement is
true, however, which I see in one of the most popular Cyclopaedias, that
“the non-clerical mind in all ages is disposed to look favorably upon
the doctrine of the universal restoration to holiness and happiness of
all fallen intelligences, whether human or angelic.” Certainly, most
of the poets who have reached the heart of men, since Burns dropped the
tear for poor “auld Nickie-ben” that softened the stony-hearted theology
of Scotland, have had “non-clerical” minds, and I suppose our young
friend is in his humble way an optimist like them. What he says in verse
is very much the same thing as what is said in prose in all companies,
and thought by a great many who are thankful to anybody that will say
it for them,--not a few clerical as wall as “non-clerical” persons among
them.
WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS.
V
What am I but the creature Thou hast made?
What have I save the blessings Thou hast lent?
What hope I but Thy mercy and Thy love?
Who but myself shall cloud my soul with fear?
Whose hand protect me from myself but Thine?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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