Classic and Contemporary Poetry
FOR THE BURNS CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION, by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: His birthday. - nay, we need not speak Last Line: The mountain-mist of glory! Subject(s): Burns, Robert (1759-1796); Poetry & Poets | ||||||||
HIS birthday. -- Nay, we need not speak The name each heart is beating, -- Each glistening eye and flushing cheek In light and flame repeating! We come in one tumultuous tide, -- One surge of wild emotion, -- As crowding through the Frith of Clyde Rolls in the Western Ocean; As when yon cloudless, quartered moon Hangs o'er each storied river, The swelling breasts of Ayr and Doon With sea-green wavelets quiver. The century shrivels like a scroll, -- The past becomes the present, -- And face to face, and soul to soul, We greet the monarch-peasant. While Shenstone strained in feeble flights With Corydon and Phillis, -- While Wolfe was climbing Abraham's heights To snatch the Bourbon lilies, -- Who heard the wailing infant's cry, The babe beneath the sheeling, Whose song to-night in every sky Will shake earth's starry ceiling, -- Whose passion-breathing voice ascends And floats like incense o'er us, Whose ringing lay of friendship blends With labor's anvil chorus? We love him, not for sweetest song, Though never tone so tender; We love him, even in his wrong, -- His wasteful self-surrender. We praise him, not for gifts divine, -- His Muse was born of woman, -- His manhood breathes in every line, -- Was ever heart more human? We love him, praise him, just for this: In every form and feature, Through wealth and want, through woe and bliss, He saw his fellow-creature! No soul could sink beneath his love, -- Not even angel blasted; No mortal power could soar above The pride that all outlasted! Ay! Heaven had set one living man Beyond the pedant's tether, -- His virtues, frailties, HE may scan, Who weighs them all together! I fling my pebble on the cairn Of him, though dead, undying; Sweet Nature's nursling, bonniest bairn Beneath her daisies lying. The waning suns, the wasting globe, Shall spare the minstrel's story, -- The centuries weave his purple robe, The mountain-mist of glory! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ENVY OF OTHER PEOPLE'S POEMS by ROBERT HASS THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AS A SONG by ROBERT HASS THE FATALIST: TIME IS FILLED by LYN HEJINIAN OXOTA: A SHORT RUSSIAN NOVEL: CHAPTER 192 by LYN HEJINIAN LET ME TELL YOU WHAT A POEM BRINGS by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA JUNE JOURNALS 6/25/88 by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA FOLLOW ROZEWICZ by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA HAVING INTENDED TO MERELY PICK ON AN OIL COMPANY, THE POEM GOES AWRY by HICOK. BOB A BALLAD OF THE BOSTON TEA-PARTY [DECEMBER 16, 1773] by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES |
|