TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
Reading edition
ON HIS DEPARTURE FOR EUROPE.
Good Doctor, what has put it in your head To sail away across the ocean blue? Have you got tired of Boston? or, instead, Do you mistrust that we are tired of you?
You wanted to see England, and you thought That you might go for once in fifty years: Well, your own way—just make your visit short; So here’s bon voyage,—and also a few tears.
We hope that you will have a joyful time, Meet hosts of friends, and sit at many a feast; And when, with all your wit and all your rhyme, You once are back in this your native clime, Don’t ask to sail again off to the East For—well, for five times fifty years at least.
Edward P. Guild.