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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=472397" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Bryant’s Seventieth Birthday</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">NOVEMBER 3, 1864</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O EVEN-HANDED Nature! we confess<br>This life that men so honor, love, and bless<br>Has filled thine olden measure. Not the less.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We count the precious seasons that remain;<br>Strike not the level of the golden grain,<br>But heap it high with years, that earth may gain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What heaven can lose,--for heaven is rich in song<br>Do not all poets, dying, still prolong<br>Their broken chants amid the seraph throng,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Where, blind no more, Ionia's bard is seen,<br>And England's heavenly minstrel sits between<br>The Mantuan and the wan-cheeked Florentine?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">This was the first sweet singer in the cage<br>Of our close-woven life. A new-born age<br>Claims in his vesper song its heritage.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Spare us, oh spare us long our heart's desire!<br>Moloch, who calls our children through the fire,<br>Leaves us the gentle master of the lyre.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We count not on the dial of the sun<br>The hours, the minutes, that his sands have run;<br>Rather, as on those flowers that one by one.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">From earliest dawn their ordered bloom display<br>Till evening's planet with her guiding ray<br>Leads in the blind old mother of the day,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We reckon by his songs, each song a flower,<br>The long, long daylight, numbering hour by hour,<br>Each breathing sweetness like a bridal bower.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">His morning glory shall we e'er forget?<br>His noontide's full-blown lily coronet?<br>His evening primrose has not opened yet;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nay, even if creeping Time should hide the skies<br>In midnight from his century-laden eyes,<br>Darkened like his who sang of Paradise,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Would not some hidden song-bud open bright<br>As the resplendent cactus of the night<br>That floods the gloom with fragrance and with<br>light?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How can we praise the verse whose music flows<br>With solemn cadence and majestic close,<br>Pure as the dew that filters through the rose?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How shall we thank him that in evil days<br>He faltered never,--nor for blame, nor praise,<br>Nor hire, nor party, shamed his earlier lays?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But as his boyhood was of manliest hue,<br>So to his youth his manly years were true,<br>All dyed in royal purple through and through!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He for whose touch the lyre of Heaven is strung<br>Needs not the flattering toil of mortal tongue<br>Let not the singer grieve to die unsung!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Marbles forget their message to mankind:<br>In his own verse the poet still we find,<br>In his own page his memory lives enshrined,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As in their amber sweets the smothered bees,--<br>As the fair cedar, fallen before the breeze,<br>Lies self-embalmed amidst the mouldering trees.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Poets, like youngest children, never grow<br>Out of their mother's fondness. Nature so<br>Holds their soft hands, and will not let them go,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Till at the last they track with even feet<br>Her rhythmic footsteps, and their pulses beat<br>Twinned with her pulses, and their lips repeat.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The secrets she has told them, as their own<br>Thus is the inmost soul of Nature known,<br>And the rapt minstrel shares her awful throne!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O lover of her mountains and her woods,<br>Her bridal chamber's leafy solitudes,<br>Where Love himself with tremulous step intrudes,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Her snows fall harmless on thy sacred fire<br>Far be the day that claims thy sounding lyre<br>To join the music of the angel choir!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet, since life's amplest measure must be filled,<br>Since throbbing hearts must be forever stilled,<br>And all must fade that evening sunsets gild,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Grant, Father, ere he close the mortal eyes<br>That see a Nation's reeking sacrifice,<br>Its smoke may vanish from these blackened skies!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then, when his summons comes, since come it must,<br>And, looking heavenward with unfaltering trust,<br>He wraps his drapery round him for the dust,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">His last fond glance will show him o'er his head<br>The Northern fires beyond the zenith spread<br>In lambent glory, blue and white and red,--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Southern cross without its bleeding load,<br>The milky way of peace all freshly strowed,<br>And every white-throned star fixed in its lost<br>abode!</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=472397" data-title="Bryant’s Seventieth Birthday de Oliver Wendell Holmes" data-description="NOVEMBER 3, 1864

O EVEN-HANDED Nature! we confess
This life that men so honor, love, and bless
Has filled thine olden measure. Not the less.

We count the precious seasons that remain;
Strike not the level of the golden grain,
But heap it high wi..."></div>
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