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The Last Reader

From Wikisource
The Last Reader
by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
556200The Last ReaderOliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

I sometimes sit beneath a tree
    And read my own sweet songs;
Though naught they may to others be,
    Each humble line prolongs
A tone that might have passed away,
But for that scarce remembered lay.

I keep them like a lock or leaf
    That some dear girl has given;
Frail record of an hour, as brief
    As sunset clouds in heaven,
But spreading purple twilight still
High over memory's shadowed hill.

They lie upon my pathway bleak,
    Those flowers that once ran wild,
As on a father's careworn cheek
    The ringlets of his child;
The golden mingling with the gray,
And stealing half its snows away.

What care I though the dust is spread
    Around these yellow leaves,
Or o'er them his sarcastic thread
    Oblivion's insect weaves?
Though weeds are tangled on the stream,
It still reflects my morning's beam.

And therefore love I such as smile
    On these neglected songs,
Nor deem that flattery's needless wile
    My opening bosom wrongs;
For who would trample, at my side,
A few pale buds, my garden's pride?

It may be that my scanty ore
    Long years have washed away,
And where were golden sands before
    Is naught but common clay;
Still something sparkles in the sun
For memory to look back upon.

And when my name no more is heard,
    My lyre no more is known,
Still let me, like a winter's bird,
    In silence and alone,
Fold over them the weary wing
Once flashing through the dews of spring.

Yes, let my fancy fondly wrap
    My youth in its decline,
And riot in the rosy lap
    Of thoughts that once were mine,
And give the worm my little store
When the last reader reads no more!