Volume 1 — TWO VIEWS OF OLD AGE.
Reading edition
By OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
At Twenty He Smiled at the Picture Presented by a Patriarch—At Three Score and Ten He Told of an Old Man's Dreams.
THE LAST LEAF.
I saw him once before, As he passed by the door, And again The pavement stones resound, As he totters o'er the ground With his cane. They say that in his prime, Ere the pruning-knife of Time Cut him down, Not a better man was found By the Crier on his round Through the town. But now he walks the streets, And he looks at all he meets Sad and wan, And he shakes his feeble head, That it seems as if he said, "They are gone." The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb. My grandmamma has said— Poor old lady, she is dead Long ago— That he had a Roman nose And his cheek was like a rose In the snow; But now his nose is thin, And it rests upon his chin Like a staff, And a crook is in his back And a melancholy crack In his laugh. I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three-cornered hat, And the breeches, and all that, Are so queer! And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring, Let them smile, as I do now, At the old forsaken bough Where I cling.
AS SEEN AT SEVENTY.
I was a little over twenty years old when I wrote "The Last Leaf." The world was a garden to me then; it is a churchyard now. And yet those are not bitter or scalding tears that fall from my eyes upon "mossy marbles."
The young who left my side early in my life's journey are still with me in the unchanged freshness and beauty of youth. Those who have long kept company with me live on after their seeming departure, were it only by the mere force of habit; their images are all around me, as if every surface had been a sensitive film that photographed them; their voices echo about me as if they had been recorded on those unforgotten cylinders which bring back to us the tones and accents that have imprinted them as the extinct animals left their tracks on the hardened sand.
The melancholy of old age has a divine tenderness in it, which only the sad experience of life can lend a sad soul.