public words
are the fit description of his strenuous attitude through all his
literary work:

"Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed--fight on, fare ever
There as here!"

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

By FRANCES H. UNDERWOOD

(1809-1894)

[Illustration: Oliver Wendell Holmes.]

Abraham Lincoln, it is said, was one day talking with a friend about
favorite poems, and repeated with deep feeling the well-known classic
stanza:

"The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom;
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb."

"That verse," he said, "was written by a man by the name of Holmes."
If the manner of referring to the authorship was little flattering,
the honest admiration of the great-hearted President might atone for
it. An attorney in a country town in Illinois might well have been
unacquainted with the reputation of a poet away in Massachusetts,
whose lines, perhaps, he had seen only in the newspapers.

No reader of feeling ever passed that simple stanza unmoved. It is for
all time not to be forgotten. Not a word could be changed any more
than in "The Bugle Song." Its pathos is all the more surprising in
connection with the quaint humor in the description of the old man who
is the subject of the poem. There is a delicious Irish character in
this, as in many other pieces of Holmes, reminding us of the familiar
couplet of Moore--

"Erin, the smile and the tear in thine eyes
Blend like The rainbow that hangs in thy skies."

"The Last Leaf," from which the stanza is quoted, was written over
fifty years ago, when the author was a little more than twenty-one.
There are a few others of the same period which may have been
considered trifles at first, but which seem to have slowly acquired
consistence, so that while they are still marvels of airy grace, they
are as firm as the carved foliage on a Gothic capital.

Not many writers live long enough to see themselves recognized as
classics; the benign judgment is more frequently tardy; and then it
happens, as De Musset says, that "Fame is a plant which grows upon a
tomb." It takes years of repetition to impress new ideas in literature
into the hearts and memories of men; and, as literary cycles move, the
age of Holmes is still new. The noblest poetry in the language, from
the unborrowed splendor of Shakespeare to the sparkling reflections of
Gray, dou