Contents -Volume INDEX -AUTHOR INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

The Strong Heroic Line

By Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894)

FRIENDS of the Muse, to you of right belong

The first staid footsteps of my square-toed song;

Full well I know the strong heroic line

Has lost its fashion since I made it mine;

But there are tricks old singers will not learn,

And this grave measure still must serve my turn.

So the old bird resumes the self-same note

His first young summer wakened in his throat:

The self-same tune the old canary sings,

And all unchanged the bobolink’s carol rings;

When the tired songsters of the day are still

The thrush repeats his long-remembered trill;

Age alters not the crow’s persistent caw,

The Yankee’s “Haow,” the stammering Briton’s “Haw”;

And so the hand that takes the lyre for you

Plays the old tune on strings that once were new.

Nor let the rhymester of the hour deride

The straight-backed measure with its stately stride:

It gave the mighty voice of Dryden scope;

It sheathed the steel-bright epigrams of Pope;

In Goldsmith’s verse it learned a sweeter strain;

Byron and Campbell wore its clanking chain;

I smile to listen while the critic’s scorn

Flouts the proud purple kings have nobly worn;

Bid each new rhymer try his dainty skill

And mould his frozen phrases as he will;—

We thank the artist for his neat device;

The shape is pleasing, though the stuff is ice.

Fashions will change—the new costume allures,

Unfading still the better type endures;

While the slashed doublet of the cavalier

Gave the old knight the pomp of chanticleer,

Our last-hatched dandy with his glass and stick

Recalls the semblance of a new-born chick;

(To match the model he is aiming at

He ought to wear an egg-shell for a hat);

Which of these objects would a painter choose,

And which Velasquez or Van Dyke refuse?