C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
The Last Leaf
By Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894)
I
As he passed by the door;
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o’er the ground
With his cane.
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan;
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
“They are gone.”
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom;
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago—
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow.
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff;
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.