Look closely at the flow of the first verse of this poem that Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr. not his son who was a jurist and legal scholar appointed to serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States by Theodore Roosevelt) writes:
There are words so delicious their sweetness will smother That boarding-school flavor of which we’re afraid, There is “lush” is a good one, and “swirl” is another,– Put both in one stanza, its fortune is made.
Now look at his second stanza:
With musical murmurs and rhythmical closes You can cheat us of smiles when you’ve nothing to tell You hand us a nosegay of milliner’s roses, And we cry with delight, “Oh, how sweet they do smell!”
Oliver Wendell Holmes was a physician, poet, and polymath, from Boston who had a long career in different fields. I would also say that he is a musician due to the way his verses flow.
This poem is musically aligned, in my humble opinion, a piece of modern art… the pictures it summons to my mind are not “far-fetched”, but you have to see that they have been very intelligently combined. The simplicity of the first verse setting the tone in the very beginning, if you every played the violin, you could hear them ensemble in the background, the voice that accompanies Holmes intermittently, as he “glides” and “plays a bit of orneriness in to close it with good mix of humor, the unfinished end, something that to my mind make it exceptionally exquisite.
What I want to tell you is that the poem “A Familiar Letter” plays and sounds in my mind, for day after I have read it, and honestly I can’t find a way to get rid of it.
To be very honest, although it impresses me, I think what has captivated me so much throughout the years is that it resonates with me. I went to boarding school when I was fourteen. But it is also timeless because it tells a story of separation and reunion.
I think the poem says in simple words what in recent months has become most important to many of us, a common desire in life, as such: I have come to the conclusion that all I want in my life, is to be able to find something true, genuine, authentic, a sincere and not false life, not one that is duried behind a facade.
The second stanza strikes me even more than the first due to the happy honesty.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to waste any more time on things that aren’t worth it (in the long run), on vain things (that satisfy the here and now). As Holmes puts it: “…cheat us of smiles…” No. On the contrary, if only I could apply his word to my way of thinking about my daily life, for example: being in my office, talking to other people… driving through the traffic, queuing in line at the supermarket, sleeping, watching TV, surfing the web, talking on the phone… Wow!…What a difference it would make! Don’t you think?
For me, this day, the only desire that competes with this is that you also adopt it into your life.
As the poem goes, it is not easy, but there it is, I leave it up to you.
Zoey
For those of you who would like to read the full poem:
A Familiar Letter
by Oliver Wendell HolmesYES, write, if you want to, there’s nothing like trying; Who knows what a treasure your casket may hold? I’ll show you that rhyming’s as easy as lying, If you’ll listen to me while the art I unfold.
Here’s a book full of words; one can choose as he fancies, As a painter his tint, as a workman his tool; Just think! all the poems and plays and romances Were drawn out of this, like the fish from a pool!
You can wander at will through its syllabled mazes, And take all you want, not a copper they cost,– What is there to hinder your picking out phrases For an epic as clever as “Paradise Lost”?
Don’t mind if the index of sense is at zero, Use words that run smoothly, whatever they mean; Leander and Lilian and Lillibullero Are much the same thing in the rhyming machine.
There are words so delicious their sweetness will smother That boarding-school flavor of which we’re afraid, There is “lush”is a good one, and “swirl” is another,– Put both in one stanza, its fortune is made.
With musical murmurs and rhythmical closes You can cheat us of smiles when you’ve nothing to tell You hand us a nosegay of milliner’s roses, And we cry with delight, “Oh, how sweet they do smell!”
Perhaps you will answer all needful conditions For winning the laurels to which you aspire, By docking the tails of the two prepositions I’ the style o’ the bards you so greatly admire.
As for subjects of verse, they are only too plenty For ringing the changes on metrical chimes; A maiden, a moonbeam, a lover of twenty Have filled that great basket with bushels of rhymes.
Let me show you a picture–‘t is far from irrelevant– By a famous old hand in the arts of design; ‘T is only a photographed sketch of an elephant,– The name of the draughtsman was Rembrandt of Rhine.
How easy! no troublesome colors to lay on, It can’t have fatigued him,– no, not in the least,– A dash here and there with a haphazard crayon, And there stands the wrinkled-skinned, baggy-limbed beast.
Just so with your verse,– ‘t is as easy as sketching,– You can reel off a song without knitting your brow, As lightly as Rembrandt a drawing or etching; It is nothing at all, if you only know how.
Well; imagine you’ve printed your volume of verses: Your forehead is wreathed with the garland of fame, Your poems the eloquent school-boy rehearses, Her album the school-girl presents for your name;
Each morning the post brings you autograph letters; You’ll answer them promptly,– an hour isn’t much For the honor of sharing a page with your betters, With magistrates, members of Congress, and such.
Of course you’re delighted to serve the committees That come with requests from the country all round, You would grace the occasion with poems and ditties When they’ve got a new schoolhouse, or poorhouse, or pound.
With a hymn for the saints and a song for the sinners, You go and are welcome wherever you please; You’re a privileged guest at all manner of dinners, You’ve a seat on the platform among the grandees.
At length your mere presence becomes a sensation, Your cup of enjoyment is filled to its brim With the pleasure Horatian of digitmonstration, As the whisper runs round of “That’s he!” or “That’s him!”
But remember, O dealer in phrases sonorous, So daintily chosen, so tunefully matched, Though you soar with the wings of the cherubim o’er us, The ovum was human from which you were hatched.
No will of your own with its puny compulsion Can summon the spirit that quickens the lyre; It comes, if at all, like the Sibyl’s convulsion And touches the brain with a finger of fire.
So perhaps, after all, it’s as well to he quiet If you’ve nothing you think is worth saying in prose, As to furnish a meal of their cannibal diet To the critics, by publishing, as you propose.
But it’s all of no use, and I’m sorry I’ve written,– I shall see your thin volume some day on my shelf; For the rhyming tarantula surely has bitten, And music must cure you, so pipe it yourself.
