TO MY READERS
[Written to introduce the Blue and Gold edition of Holmes's Poems]]
Nay, blame me not; I might have spared
Your patience many a trivial verse,
Yet these my earlier welcome shared,
So, let the better shield the worse.
And some might say, "Those ruder songs
Had freshness which the new have lost;
To spring the opening leaf belongs,
The chestnut-burs await the frost."
When those I wrote, my locks were brown,
When these I write—ah, well-a-day!
The autumn thistle's silvery down
Is not the purple bloom of May!
Go, little book, whose pages hold
Those garnered years in loving trust;
How long before your blue and gold
Shall fade and whiten in the dust?
O sexton of the alcoved tomb,
Where souls in leathern cerements lie,
Tell me each living poet's doom!
How long before his book shall die?
It matters little, soon or late,
A day, a month, a year, an age,—
I read oblivion in its date,
And Finis on its title-page.
Before we sighed, our griefs were told;
Before we smiled, our joys were sun;
And all our passions shaped of old
In accents lost to mortal tongue.
In vain a fresher mould we seek,—
Can all the varied phrases tell
That Babel's wandering children speak
How thrushes sing or lilacs smell?
