To Holmes on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday

Dear Wendell, why need count the yearsSince first your genius made me thrill,If what moved then to smiles or tears,Or both contending, move me still?

What has the Calendar to doWith poets? What Time's fruitless toothWith gay immortals such as youWhose years but emphasize your youth?

One air gave both their lease of breath;The same paths lured our boyish feet;One earth will hold us safe in deathWith dust of saints and scholars sweet.

Our legends from one source were drawn,I scarce distinguish yours from mine,And don't we make the Gentiles yawnWith "You remembers?" o'er our wine!

If I, with too senescent air,Invade your elder memory's pale,You snub me with a pitying "WhereWere you in the September Gale?"

Both stared entranced at Lafayette,Saw Jackson dubbed with LL. D.What Cambridge saw not strikes us yetAs scarcely worth one's while to see.

Ten years my senior, when my nameIn Harvard's entrance-book was writ,Her halls still echoed with the fameOf you, her poet and her wit.

'Tis fifty years from then to now:But your Last Leaf renews its green,Though, for the laurels on your brow(So thick they crowd), 'tis hardly seen.

The oriole's fledglings fifty timesHave flown from our familiar elms;As many poets with their rhymesOblivion's darkling dust o'erwhelms.

The birds are hushed, the poets goneWhere no harsh critic's lash can reach,And still your winged brood sing onTo all who love our English speech.

Nay, let the foolish records beThat make believe you're seventy-five:You're the old Wendell still to me,—And that's the youngest man alive.

The gray-blue eyes, I see them still,The gallant front with brown o'erhung,The shape alert, the wit at will,The phrase that stuck, but never stung.

You keep your youth as you Scotch firs,Whose gaunt line my horizon hems,Though twilight all the lowland blurs,Hold sunset in their ruddy stems.

You with the elders? Yes, 'tis true,But in no sadly literal sense,With elders and coevals too,Whose verb admits no preterite tense.

Master alike in speech and songOf fame's great antiseptic — Style,You with the classic few belongWho tempered wisdom with a smile.

Outlive us all! Who else like youCould sift the seedcorn from our chaff,And make us with the pen we knewDeathless at least in epitaph?