Oliver Wendell Holmes Poems

Poems » oliver wendell holmes

Oliver Wendell Holmes
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., (August 29, 1809 – October 7, 1894) was a physician by profession but achieved fame as a writer; he was one of the best regarded American poets of the 19th century. He was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Abiel Holmes (1763-1837), a Calvinist clergyman, avid historian, author of Annals of America (a critically praised work for which he was granted an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh) and of unnotable poetry, and his second wife, Sarah Wendell, of a prominent New York family. Through her, Dr. Holmes was descended from Massachusetts Governors Thomas Dudley and Simon Bradstreet and his wife, Dudley's daughter, Anne Bradstreet, the first published American female poet. In 1840, Holmes married Amelia Lee Jackson, daughter of the Hon. Charles Jackson (1775-1855), formerly Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Their son was the Civil War hero and great American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

i remember, i remember
 
 
I remember, I remember,
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
C... [read poem]
the chambered nautilus
 
 
This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sail the unshadowed main,-
The venturous ba... [read poem]
let evening come
 
 
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as t... [read poem]
cacoethes scribendi
 
 
If all the trees in all the woods were men;
And each and every blade of grass a pen;
If ev... [read poem]
otherwise
 
 
I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal... [read poem]
the song of the shirt
 
 
With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A Woman sat, in unwomanly rag... [read poem]
Continue in Thomas Hood »»»

Page 1 of 1