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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=472386" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>At The Saturday Club</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">THIS is our place of meeting; opposite<br>That towered and pillared building: look at it;<br>King's Chapel in the Second George's day,<br>Rebellion stole its regal name away,--<br>Stone Chapel sounded better; but at last<br>The poisoned name of our provincial past<br>Had lost its ancient venom; then once more<br>Stone Chapel was King's Chapel as before.<br>(So let rechristened North Street, when it can,<br>Bring back the days of Marlborough and Queen Anne!)<br>Next the old church your wandering eye will meet--<br>A granite pile that stares upon the street--<br>Our civic temple; slanderous tongues have said<br>Its shape was modelled from St. Botolph's head,<br>Lofty, but narrow; jealous passers-by<br>Say Boston always held her head too high.<br>Turn half-way round, and let your look survey<br>The white facade that gleams across the way,--<br>The many-windowed building, tall and wide,<br>The palace-inn that shows its northern side<br>In grateful shadow when the sunbeams beat<br>The granite wall in summer's scorching heat.<br>This is the place; whether its name you spell<br>Tavern, or caravansera, or hotel.<br>Would I could steal its echoes! you should find<br>Such store of vanished pleasures brought to mind<br>Such feasts! the laughs of many a jocund hour<br>That shook the mortar from King George's tower;<br>Such guests! What famous names its record boasts,<br>Whose owners wander in the mob of ghosts!<br>Such stories! Every beam and plank is filled<br>With juicy wit the joyous talkers spilled,<br>Ready to ooze, as once the mountain pine<br>The floors are laid with oozed its turpentine!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A month had flitted since The Club had met;<br>The day came round; I found the table set,<br>The waiters lounging round the marble stairs,<br>Empty as yet the double row of chairs.<br>I was a full half hour before the rest,<br>Alone, the banquet-chamber's single guest.<br>So from the table's side a chair I took,<br>And having neither company nor book<br>To keep me waking, by degrees there crept<br>A torpor over me,--in short, I slept.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Loosed from its chain, along the wreck-strown track<br>Of the dead years my soul goes travelling back;<br>My ghosts take on their robes of flesh; it seems<br>Dreaming is life; nay, life less life than dreams,<br>So real are the shapes that meet my eyes.<br>They bring no sense of wonder, no surprise,<br>No hint of other than an earth-born source;<br>All seems plain daylight, everything of course.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How dim the colors are, how poor and faint<br>This palette of weak words with which I paint!<br>Here sit my friends; if I could fix them so<br>As to my eyes they seem, my page would glow<br>Like a queen's missal, warm as if the brush<br>Of Titian or Velasquez brought the flush<br>Of life into their features. Ay de mi!<br>If syllables were pigments, you should see<br>Such breathing portraitures as never man<br>Found in the Pitti or the Vatican.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here sits our POET, Laureate, if you will.<br>Long has he worn the wreath, and wears it still.<br>Dead? Nay, not so; and yet they say his bust<br>Looks down on marbles covering royal dust,<br>Kings by the Grace of God, or Nature's grace;<br>Dead! No! Alive! I see him in his place,<br>Full-featured, with the bloom that heaven denies<br>Her children, pinched by cold New England skies,<br>Too often, while the nursery's happier few<br>Win from a summer cloud its roseate hue.<br>Kind, soft-voiced, gentle, in his eye there shines<br>The ray serene that filled Evangeline's.<br>Modest he seems, not shy; content to wait<br>Amid the noisy clamor of debate<br>The looked-for moment when a peaceful word<br>Smooths the rough ripples louder tongues have stirred.<br>In every tone I mark his tender grace<br>And all his poems hinted in his face;<br>What tranquil joy his friendly presence gives!<br>How could. I think him dead? He lives! He lives!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There, at the table's further end I see<br>In his old place our Poet's vis-a-vis,<br>The great PROFESSOR, strong, broad-shouldered, square,<br>In life's rich noontide, joyous, debonair.<br>His social hour no leaden care alloys,<br>His laugh rings loud and mirthful as a boy's,--<br>That lusty laugh the Puritan forgot,--<br>What ear has heard it and remembers not?<br>How often, halting at some wide crevasse<br>Amid the windings of his Alpine pass,<br>High up the cliffs, the climbing mountaineer,<br>Listening the far-off avalanche to hear,<br>Silent, and leaning on his steel-shod staff,<br>Has heard that cheery voice, that ringing laugh,<br>From the rude cabin whose nomadic walls<br>Creep with the moving glacier as it crawls<br>How does vast Nature lead her living train<br>In ordered sequence through that spacious brain,<br>As in the primal hour when Adam named<br>The new-born tribes that young creation claimed!--<br>How will her realm be darkened, losing thee,<br>Her darling, whom we call _our_ AGASSIZ!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But who is he whose massive frame belies<br>The maiden shyness of his downcast eyes?<br>Who broods in silence till, by questions pressed,<br>Some answer struggles from his laboring breast?<br>An artist Nature meant to dwell apart,<br>Locked in his studio with a human heart,<br>Tracking its eaverned passions to their lair,<br>And all its throbbing mysteries laying bare.<br>Count it no marvel that he broods alone<br>Over the heart he studies,--'t is his own;<br>So in his page, whatever shape it wear,<br>The Essex wizard's shadowed self is there,--<br>The great ROMANCER, hid beneath his veil<br>Like the stern preacher of his sombre tale;<br>Virile in strength, yet bashful as a girl,<br>Prouder than Hester, sensitive as Pearl.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">From his mild throng of worshippers released,<br>Our Concord Delphi sends its chosen priest,<br>Prophet or poet, mystic, sage, or seer,<br>By every title always welcome here.<br>Why that ethereal spirit's frame describe?<br>You know the race-marks of the Brahmin tribe,<br>The spare, slight form, the sloping shoulders' droop,<br>The calm, scholastic mien, the clerkly stoop,<br>The lines of thought the sharpened features wear,<br>Carved by the edge of keen New England air.<br>List! for he speaks! As when a king would choose<br>The jewels for his bride, he might refuse<br>This diamond for its flaw,--find that less bright<br>Than those, its fellows, and a pearl less white<br>Than fits her snowy neck, and yet at last,<br>The fairest gems are chosen, and made fast<br>In golden fetters; so, with light delays<br>He seeks the fittest word to fill his phrase;<br>Nor vain nor idle his fastidious quest,<br>His chosen word is sure to prove the best.<br>Where in the realm of thought, whose air is song,<br>Does he, the Buddha of the West, belong?<br>He seems a winged Franklin, sweetly wise,<br>Born to unlock the secrets of the skies;<br>And which the nobler calling,--if 't is fair<br>Terrestrial with celestial to compare,--<br>To guide the storm-cloud's elemental flame,<br>Or walk the chambers whence the lightning came,<br>Amidst the sources of its subtile fire,<br>And steal their effluence for his lips and lyre?<br>If lost at times in vague aerial flights,<br>None treads with firmer footstep when he lights;<br>A soaring nature, ballasted with sense,<br>Wisdom without her wrinkles or pretence,<br>In every Bible he has faith to read,<br>And every altar helps to shape his creed.<br>Ask you what name this prisoned spirit bears<br>While with ourselves this fleeting breath it shares?<br>Till angels greet him with a sweeter one<br>In heaven, on earth we call him EMERSON.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I start; I wake; the vision is withdrawn;<br>Its figures fading like the stars at dawn;<br>Crossed from the roll of life their cherished names,<br>And memory's pictures fading in their frames;<br>Yet life is lovelier for these transient gleams<br>Of buried friendships; blest is he who dreams!</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>
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<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=472386" data-title="At The Saturday Club de Oliver Wendell Holmes" data-description="THIS is our place of meeting; opposite
That towered and pillared building: look at it;
King's Chapel in the Second George's day,
Rebellion stole its regal name away,--
Stone Chapel sounded better; but at last
The poisoned name of our provincial pa..."></div>
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