Know old Cambridge? Hope you do. Born there? Don't say so! I was, too. (Born in a house with a gambrel-roof, Standing still, if you must have proof. 'Gambrel? - Gambrel ?'. Let me beg You'll look at a horse's hinder leg, First great angle above the hoof, That's the gambrel hence gambrelroof.) : Nicest place that ever was seen,— Not in the shape of unbaked pies A kind of harbor it seems to be, 30 40 With heart-shaped pebbles of blood-red stone. And so the sum kept gathering still Till after the battle of Bunker's Hill. When paper money became so cheap, (A. M. in '90? I've looked with care But nothing had altered the Parson's will. But saddled with such a monstrous debt! Things grew quite too bad to bear, curse, And every season but made it worse. 111 About those conditions?' Well, now you go 140 And do as I tell you, and then you'll know. As much as to say that he allows. 1 For nearly forty years, from 1851 to 1889, Holmes never failed to bring a poem to the annual reunion of his college class. These poems, merely occasional," and local as they were in origin, form a section in his collected works which is perhaps the most important, and, except for his best humorous narratives and his two finest lyrics, the most likely to survive; for, with all Holmes's characteristic wit and humor, they cele brate feelings that are broadly and typically American -class loyalty and college loyalty, and growing out of these, the loyalty of man's enduring friendship, and loyalty to country. The famous class of '29' counted among its members a chief-justice of Massachusetts, George T. Bigelow (the Judge' of this poem); a justice of the United That boy with the grave mathematical look Made believe he had written a wonderful book, And the ROYAL SOCIETY thought it was true! So they chose him right in; a good joke it was, too! States Supreme Court, B. R. Curtis (the boy with the three-decker brain'); the great preacher, James Freeman Clarke; Professor Benjamin Peirce ('that boy with the grave mathematical look'); and the author of America,' S. F. Smith. For a full list of members of the class, see the Cambridge Edition of Holmes's Poetical Works, p. 340. 1 Hon. Francis B. Crowninshield, Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. 2 G. W. Richardson, of Worcester, Massachusetts. Hon. George L. Davis. 4 - why, yes! God bless me ! and was it so long ago? I fear I'm growing forgetful, as old folks do, you know; Holmes's fiftieth birthday. He said, 'Well now, old fellow, I'm thinking that you and I, If we act like other people, shall be older by and by; What though the bright blue ocean is smooth as a pond can be, At fifty a man is wrinkled, and may be bald or gray; I call men old at fifty, in spite of all they say. And when on the western summits the fading light appears, There is always a line of breakers to fringe It touches with rosy fingers the last of my the broadest sea. fifty years. There have been both men and women whose hearts were firm and bold, But there never was one of fifty that loved to say 'I'm old;' So any elderly person that strives to shirk his years, Make him stand up at a table and try him by his peers. 'I know it,' I said, 'old fellow; you speak Now here I stand at fifty, my jury gathered the solemn truth; round; Sprinkled with dust of silver, but not yet silver-crowned, Ready to meet your verdict, waiting to hear it told; Guilty of fifty summers; speak! Is the verdict old? No 40 say that his hearing fails him; say that his sight grows dim; Say that he's getting wrinkled and weak in back and limb, Losing his wits and temper, but pleading, to make amends, The youth of his fifty summers he finds in his twenty friends. Yon stream, whose sources run 1 This and the three following poems are from the Professor at the Breakfast Table. included in that volume. The Boys' also is |