#oliver wendell holmes

AsAlgy surveyed his assistants’ garden from a branch of a silver birch tree, he noticed an interesting phenomenon on the ground some distance away. Fluttering over to that spot, Algy settled himself gently on the damp grass among the long autumn shadows, taking great care not to crush the myriad wee fungi which had sprung up beneath the trees.

Algy was fascinated by toadstools: they seemed to appear overnight for no apparent reason and quite often vanished again in an equally mysterious way. Although charming in their neat orange-brown dresses, these wee fungi were particularly modest and unassuming, and they reminded him of a quaint 19th century poem. Algy knew that many toads lived in his assistants’ garden, and he wondered whether that might perhaps account for the large number of toadstools…

There’s a thing that grows by the fainting flower,
And springs in the shade of the lady’s bower;
The lily shrinks, and the rose turns pale,
When they feel its breath in the summer gale,
And the tulip curls its leaves in pride,
And the blue-eyed violet starts aside;
But the lily may flaunt, and the tulip stare,
For what does the honest toadstool care?

She does not glow in a painted vest,
And she never blooms on the maiden’s breast;
But she comes, as the saintly sisters do,
In a modest suit of a Quaker hue.
And, when the stars in the evening skies
Are weeping dew from their gentle eyes,
The toad comes out from his hermit cell,
The tale of his faithful love to tell.

Oh, there is light in her lover’s glance,
That flies to her heart like a silver lance;
His breeches are made of spotted skin,
His jacket is tight, and his pumps are thin;
In a cloudless night you may hear his song,
As its pensive melody floats along,
And, if you will look by the moonlight fair,
The trembling form of the toad is there.

And he twines his arms round her slender stem,
In the shade of her velvet diadem;
But she turns away in her maiden shame,
And will not breathe on the kindling flame;
He sings at her feet through the livelong night,
And creeps to his cave at the break of light;
And whenever he comes to the air above,
His throat is swelling with baffled love.

Algy wishes you all a peaceful and happy weekend, and if you have a chance to wander in the woods, he hopes that you too may find some fascinating autumn fungi… but he says that if you are tempted to eat them, please be exceedingly careful

[Algy is quoting the poem The Toadstool by the 19th century American poet Oliver Wendell Holmes.]

Bookplate for Oliver Wendell Holmes

Per ampliora ad altiora

The Chambered Nautilus by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,–
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,–
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn;
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:–

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!