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Best Famous Takes Its Toll On You Poems

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Written by Oliver Wendell Holmes | Create an image from this poem

The Flaâneur

 I love all sights of earth and skies, 
From flowers that glow to stars that shine; 
The comet and the penny show, 
All curious things, above, below, 
Hold each in turn my wandering eyes: 
I claim the Christian Pagan's line, 
Humani nihil, -- even so, -- 
And is not human life divine? 
When soft the western breezes blow, 
And strolling youths meet sauntering maids, 
I love to watch the stirring trades 
Beneath the Vallombrosa shades 
Our much-enduring elms bestow; 
The vender and his rhetoric's flow, 
That lambent stream of liquid lies; 
The bait he dangles from his line, 
The gudgeon and his gold-washed prize. 
I halt before the blazoned sign 
That bids me linger to admire 
The drama time can never tire, 
The little hero of the hunch, 
With iron arm and soul of fire, 
And will that works his fierce desire, -- 
Untamed, unscared, unconquered Punch! 
My ear a pleasing torture finds 
In tones the withered sibyl grinds, -- 
The dame sans merci's broken strain, 
Whom I erewhile, perchance, have known, 
When Orleans filled the Bourbon throne, 
A siren singing by the Seine. 

But most I love the tube that spies 
The orbs celestial in their march; 
That shows the comet as it whisks 
Its tail across the planets' disks, 
As if to blind their blood-shot eyes; 
Or wheels so close against the sun 
We tremble at the thought of risks 
Our little spinning ball may run, 
To pop like corn that children parch, 
From summer something overdone, 
And roll, a cinder, through the skies. 

Grudge not to-day the scanty fee 
To him who farms the firmament, 
To whom the Milky Way is free; 
Who holds the wondrous crystal key, 
The silent Open Sesame 
That Science to her sons has lent; 
Who takes his toll, and lifts the bar 
That shuts the road to sun and star. 
If Venus only comes to time, 
(And prophets say she must and shall,) 
To-day will hear the tinkling chime 
Of many a ringing silver dime, 
For him whose optic glass supplies 
The crowd with astronomic eyes, -- 
The Galileo of the Mall. 

Dimly the transit morning broke; 
The sun seemed doubting what to do, 
As one who questions how to dress, 
And takes his doublets from the press, 
And halts between the old and new. 
Please Heaven he wear his suit of blue, 
Or don, at least, his ragged cloak, 
With rents that show the azure through! 

I go the patient crowd to join 
That round the tube my eyes discern, 
The last new-comer of the file, 
And wait, and wait, a weary while, 
And gape, and stretch, and shrug, and smile, 
(For each his place must fairly earn, 
Hindmost and foremost, in his turn,) 
Till hitching onward, pace by pace, 
I gain at last the envied place, 
And pay the white exiguous coin: 
The sun and I are face to face; 
He glares at me, I stare at him; 
And lo! my straining eye has found 
A little spot that, black and round, 
Lies near the crimsoned fire-orb's rim. 
O blessed, beauteous evening star, 
Well named for her whom earth adores, -- 
The Lady of the dove-drawn car, -- 
I know thee in thy white simar; 
But veiled in black, a rayless spot, 
Blank as a careless scribbler's blot, 
Stripped of thy robe of silvery flame, -- 
The stolen robe that Night restores 
When Day has shut his golden doors, -- 
I see thee, yet I know thee not; 
And canst thou call thyself the same? 

A black, round spot, -- and that is all; 
And such a speck our earth would be 
If he who looks upon the stars 
Through the red atmosphere of Mars 
Could see our little creeping ball 
Across the disk of crimson crawl 
As I our sister planet see. 

And art thou, then, a world like ours, 
Flung from the orb that whirled our own 
A molten pebble from its zone? 
How must thy burning sands absorb 
The fire-waves of the blazing orb, 
Thy chain so short, thy path so near, 
Thy flame-defying creatures hear 
The maelstroms of the photosphere! 
And is thy bosom decked with flowers 
That steal their bloom from scalding showers? 
And hast thou cities, domes, and towers, 
And life, and love that makes it dear, 
And death that fills thy tribes with fear? 


Lost in my dream, my spirit soars 
Through paths the wandering angels know; 
My all-pervading thought explores 
The azure ocean's lucent shores; 
I leave my mortal self below, 
As up the star-lit stairs I climb, 
And still the widening view reveals 
In endless rounds the circling wheels 
That build the horologe of time. 
New spheres, new suns, new systems gleam; 
The voice no earth-born echo hears 
Steals softly on my ravished ears: 
I hear them "singing as they shine" -- 
A mortal's voice dissolves my dream: 
My patient neighbor, next in line, 
Hints gently there are those who wait. 
O guardian of the starry gate, 
What coin shall pay this debt of mine? 
Too slight thy claim, too small the fee 
That bids thee turn the potent key 
The Tuscan's hand has placed in thine. 
Forgive my own the small affront, 
The insult of the proffered dime; 
Take it, O friend, since this thy wont, 
But still shall faithful memory be 
A bankrupt debtor unto thee, 
And pay thee with a grateful rhyme.


Written by Joyce Kilmer | Create an image from this poem

Easter Week

 (In memory of Joseph Mary Plunkett)

("Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.")

William Butler Yeats.

"Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave."
Then, Yeats, what gave that Easter dawn
A hue so radiantly brave?
There was a rain of blood that day,
Red rain in gay blue April weather.
It blessed the earth till it gave birth
To valour thick as blooms of heather.
Romantic Ireland never dies!
O'Leary lies in fertile ground,
And songs and spears throughout the years
Rise up where patriot graves are found.
Immortal patriots newly dead
And ye that bled in bygone years,
What banners rise before your eyes?
What is the tune that greets your ears?
The young Republic's banners smile
For many a mile where troops convene.
O'Connell Street is loudly sweet
With strains of Wearing of the Green.
The soil of Ireland throbs and glows
With life that knows the hour is here
To strike again like Irishmen
For that which Irishmen hold dear.
Lord Edward leaves his resting place
And Sarsfield's face is glad and fierce.
See Emmet leap from troubled sleep
To grasp the hand of Padraic Pearse!
There is no rope can strangle song
And not for long death takes his toll.
No prison bars can dim the stars
Nor quicklime eat the living soul.
Romantic Ireland is not old.
For years untold her youth will shine.
Her heart is fed on Heavenly bread,
The blood of martyrs is her wine.
Written by Henry Van Dyke | Create an image from this poem

Robert Browning

 How blind the toil that burrows like the mole, 
In winding graveyard pathways underground,
For Browning's lineage! What if men have found
Poor footmen or rich merchants on the roll
Of his forbears? Did they beget his soul? 
Nay, for he came of ancestry renowned 
Through all the world, -- the poets laurel-crowned
With wreaths from which the autumn takes no toll. 

The blazons on his coat-of-arms are these:
The flaming sign of Shelley's heart on fire,
The golden globe of Shakespeare's human stage,
The staff and scrip of Chaucer's pilgrimage, 
The rose of Dante's deep, divine desire,
The tragic mask of wise Euripides.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things