For this still hour, this sense of mystery Loving and loved. If thought must back far Beyond the evening star, No words outworn suffice on lip or scroll: The soul would fain with soul ward run To those who, one by one, In the great silence and the dark beyond Vanished with farewells fond, Wait, while these few swift-passing days Unseen, not lost; our grateful memories fulfil still 1 One genuine lyric outburst, however, done in this year of the law, almost made him in a way actually famous. The frigate Constitution, historic indeed, but old and unseaworthy, then lying in the navy yard at Charlestown, was condemned by the Navy Department to be destroyed. Holmes read this in a newspaper parsgraph, and it stirred him. On a scrap of paper, with a lead pencil, he rapidly shaped the impetuous stanzas of Old Ironsides,' and sent them to the Daily Advertiser, of Boston. Fast and far they travelled through the newspaper press of the country; they were even printed in hand-bills and circulated about the streets of Washington. An occurrence, which otherwise would probably have passed unnoticed, now stirred a national indignation. The astonished Secretary made haste to retrace a step which he had taken quite innocently in the way of business. The Constitution's tattered enBign was not torn down. The ringing, spirited verses gave the gallant ship a reprieve, which satisfied sentimentality, and a large part of the people of the United States had heard of Ŏ. W. Holmes, law student at Cambridge, who had only come of age a month ago. (Morse's Life of Holmes, vol. i, pp. 79, 80.) This is probably the only case in which a government polity was changed by the verses of a college student. The frigate Constitution was launched in 1797, first served in the war against the pirates in the Mediterranean, and made a brilliant record in the war of 1812. In 1834 she was almost entirely rebuilt, and continued in commission until 1881. From that time she was kept at the navy yard at Portsmouth, N. H., until in 1897 she was taken to the Charlestown Navy Yard for the celebration of the centenary of her launching. Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave; Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, 1830. 1830 THE BALLAD OF THE OYSTERMAN 2 It was a tall young oysterman lived by the river-side, His shop was just upon the bank, his boat was on the tide; The daughter of a fisherman, that was so straight and slim, Lived over on the other bank, right opposite to him. * |