To H. W. Longfellow

by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

  Our Poet, who has taught the Western breeze
  To waft his songs before him o'er the seas,
  Will find them wheresoe'er his wanderings reach
  Borne on the spreading tide of English speech
Twin with the rhythmic waves that kiss the farthest beach.

  Where shall the singing bird a stranger be
  That finds a nest for him in every tree?
  How shall he travel who can never go
  Where his own voice the echoes do not know,
Where his own garden flowers no longer learn to grow?

  Ah! gentlest soul! how gracious, how benign
  Breathes through our troubled life that voice of thine,
  Filled with a sweetness born of happier spheres,
  That wins and warms, that kindles, softens, cheers,
That calms the wildest woe and stays the bitterest tears!

  Forgive the simple words that sound like praise;
  The mist before me dims my gilded phrase;
  Our speech at best is half alive and cold,
  And save the tenderer moments make us bold
Our whitening lips would close, their truest truth untold.

  We who behold our autumn sun below
  The Scorpion's sign, against the Archer's bow,
  Know well what parting means of friend from friend;
  After the snows no freshening dews descend,
And what the frost has marred, the sunshine will not mend.

  So we all count the months, the weeks, the days,
  That keep thee from us in unwonted ways,
  Grudging to alien hearths our widowed time;
  And one has shaped a breath in artless rhyme
That sighs, "We track thee still through each remotest clime."

  What wishes, longings, blessings, prayers shall be
  The more than golden freight that floats with thee!
  And know, whatever welcome thou shalt find,—
The proudest, fondest love thou leavest still behind!