<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=472383" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>At The Close Of A Course Of Lectures</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">As the voice of the watch to the mariner's dream,<br>As the footstep of Spring on the ice-girdled stream,<br>There comes a soft footstep, a whisper, to me,--<br>The vision is over,--the rivulet free.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We have trod from the threshold of turbulent March,<br>Till the green scarf of April is hung on the larch,<br>And down the bright hillside that welcomes the day,<br>We hear the warm panting of beautiful May.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We will part before Summer has opened her wing,<br>And the bosom of June swells the bodice of Spring,<br>While the hope of the season lies fresh in the bud,<br>And the young life of Nature runs warm in our blood.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It is but a word, and the chain is unbound,<br>The bracelet of steel drops unclasped to the ground;<br>No hand shall replace it,--it rests where it fell,---<br>It is but one word that we all know too well.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet the hawk with the wildness untamed in his eye,<br>If you free him, stares round ere he springs to the sky;<br>The slave whom no longer his fetters restrain<br>Will turn for a moment and look at his chain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Our parting is not as the friendship of years,<br>That chokes with the blessing it speaks through its tears;<br>We have walked in a garden, and, looking around,<br>Have plucked a few leaves from the myrtles we found.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But now at the gate of the garden we stand,<br>And the moment has come for unclasping the hand;<br>Will you drop it like lead, and in silence retreat<br>Like the twenty crushed forms from an omnibus seat?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nay! hold it one moment,--the last we may share,--<br>I stretch it in kindness, and not for my fare;<br>You may pass through the doorway in rank or in file,<br>If your ticket from Nature is stamped with a smile.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For the sweetest of smiles is the smile as we part,<br>When the light round the lips is a ray from the heart;<br>And lest a stray tear from its fountain might swell,<br>We will seal the bright spring with a quiet farewell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Oliver+Wendell+Holmes">Oliver Wendell Holmes</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=472383" data-title="At The Close Of A Course Of Lectures de Oliver Wendell Holmes" data-description="As the voice of the watch to the mariner's dream, As the footstep of Spring on the ice-girdled stream, There comes a soft footstep, a whisper, to me,-- The vision is over,--the rivulet free. We have trod from the threshold of turbulent March, Til..."></div> </div> </div>

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