Over the Teacups - Oliver Wendell Holmes

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at the hands of the brute forces of nature, from the control of which they are soon to be set free. There are some old pessimists, it is true, who believe that they and a few others are on a raft, and that the ship which they have quitted, holding the rest of mankind, is going down with all on board. It is no wonder that there should be such when we remember what have been the teachings of the priesthood through long series of ignorant centuries. Every age has to shape the Divine image it worships over again,—the present age and our own country are busily engaged in the task at this time. We unmake Presidents and make new ones. This is an apprenticeship for a higher task. Our doctrinal teachers are unmaking the Deity of the Westminster Catechism and trying to model a new one, with more of modern humanity and less of ancient barbarism in his composition. If Jonathan Edwards had lived long enough, I have no doubt his creed would have softened into a kindly, humanized belief.

      Some twenty or thirty years ago, I said to Longfellow that certain statistical tables I had seen went to show that poets were not a long-lived race. He doubted whether there was anything to prove they were particularly short-lived. Soon after this, he handed me a list he had drawn up. I cannot lay my hand upon it at this moment, but I remember that Metastasio was the oldest of them all. He died at the age of eighty-four. I have had some tables made out, which I have every reason to believe are correct so far as they go. From these, it appears that twenty English poets lived to the average age of fifty-six years and a little over. The eight American poets on the list averaged seventy-three and a half, nearly, and they are not all dead yet. The list including Greek, Latin, Italian, and German poets, with American and English, gave an average of a little over sixty-two years. Our young poets need not be alarmed. They can remember that Bryant lived to be eighty-three years old, that Longfellow reached seventy-five and Halleck seventy-seven, while Whittier is living at the age of nearly eighty-two. Tennyson is still writing at eighty, and Browning reached the age of seventy-seven.

      Shall a man who in his younger days has written poetry, or what passed for it, continue to attempt it in his later years? Certainly, if it amuses or interests him, no one would object to his writing in verse as much as he likes. Whether he should continue to write for the public is another question. Poetry is a good deal a matter of heart-beats, and the circulation is more languid in the later period of life. The joints are less supple; the arteries are more or less “ossified.” Something like these changes has taken place in the mind. It has lost the flexibility, the plastic docility, which it had in youth and early manhood, when the gristle had but just become hardened into bone. It is the nature of poetry to writhe itself along through the tangled growths of the vocabulary, as a snake winds through the grass, in sinuous, complex, and unexpected curves, which crack every joint that is not supple as india-rubber.

      I had a poem that I wanted to print just here. But after what I have this moment said, I hesitated, thinking that I might provoke the obvious remark that I exemplified the unfitness of which I had been speaking. I remembered the advice I had given to a poetical aspirant not long since, which I think deserves a paragraph to itself.

      My friend, I said, I hope you will not write in verse. When you write in prose you say what you mean. When you write in rhyme you say what you must.

      Should I send this poem to the publishers, or not?

      “Some said, 'John, print it;' others said, 'Not so.'”

      I did not ask “some” or “others.” Perhaps I should have thought it best to keep my poem to myself and the few friends for whom it was written. All at once, my daimon—that other Me over whom I button my waistcoat when I button it over my own person—put it into my head to look up the story of Madame Saqui. She was a famous danseuse, who danced Napoleon in and out, and several other dynasties besides. Her last appearance was at the age of seventy-six, which is rather late in life for the tight rope, one of her specialties. Jules Janin mummified her when she died in 1866, at the age of eighty. He spiced her up in his eulogy as if she had been the queen of a modern Pharaoh. His foamy and flowery rhetoric put me into such a state of good-nature that I said, I will print my poem, and let the critical Gil Blas handle it as he did the archbishop's sermon, or would have done, if he had been a writer for the “Salamanca Weekly.”

      It must be premised that a very beautiful loving cup was presented to me on my recent birthday, by eleven ladies of my acquaintance. This was the most costly and notable of all the many tributes I received, and for which in different forms I expressed my gratitude.

      TO THE ELEVEN LADIES

       WHO PRESENTED ME WITH A SILVER LOVING CUP ON THE

       TWENTY-NINTH OF AUGUST, M DCCC LXXXIX.

       “Who gave this cup?” The secret thou wouldst steal

       Its brimming flood forbids it to reveal:

       No mortal's eye shall read it till he first

       Cool the red throat of thirst.

       If on the golden floor one draught remain,

       Trust me, thy careful search will be in vain;

       Not till the bowl is emptied shalt thou know

       The names enrolled below.

       Deeper than Truth lies buried in her well

       Those modest names the graven letters spell

       Hide from the sight; but, wait, and thou shalt see

       Who the good angels be

       Whose bounty glistens in the beauteous gift

       That friendly hands to loving lips shall lift:

       Turn the fair goblet when its floor is dry,

       Their names shall meet thine eye.

       Count thou their number on the beads of Heaven,

       Alas! the clustered Pleiads are but seven;

       Nay, the nine sister Muses are too few,

       —The Graces must add two.

       “For whom this gift?” For one who all too long

       Clings to his bough among the groves of song;

       Autumn's last leaf, that spreads its faded wing

       To greet a second spring.

       Dear friends, kind friends, whate'er the cup may hold,

       Bathing its burnished depths, will change to gold

       Its last bright drop let thirsty Maenads drain,

       Its fragrance will remain.

       Better love's perfume in the empty bowl

       Than wine's nepenthe for the aching soul

       Sweeter than song that ever poet sung,

       It makes an old heart young!

       Table of Contents

      After the reading of the paper which was reported in the preceding number of this record, the company fell into talk upon the subject with which it dealt.

      The Mistress. “I could have wished you had said more about the religious attitude of old age as such. Surely the thoughts of aged persons must be very much taken up with the question of what is to become of them. I should like to have The Dictator explain himself a little more fully on this point.”

      My dear madam, I said, it is a delicate matter to talk about. You remember Mr. Calhoun's response to the advances of an over-zealous young clergyman who wished to examine him as to his outfit for the long journey. I think the relations between man and his Maker grow more intimate, more confidential, if I may say so, with advancing years. The old man is less disposed to argue about special matters of belief, and more ready to sympathize with spiritually minded persons without anxious questioning as to the fold to which they belong. That kindly judgment which he exercises with regard to others he will, naturally enough, apply to himself. The caressing tone in which the Emperor Hadrian addresses

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