Damsel Dorothy

Damsel Dorothy.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
298.8

Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the most distin-
guished of the New England group of writers, was
born in 1800, and was one of the graduating class
of Harvard in 1820 which contained so many cele brated men.
He adopted the profession of medicine,
but although he attained fame by it, he
is almost entirely known by his writings.
He pro duced & vast amount of poetry, much of it of a
humorous wort, and the well known “Autocrat of
the Breakfast Table” and “Professor at the Break-
fast Table.” He published several volumes of
poetry, much of a high character, a novel. “Elsle
Venner.” and a book of travels, besides essays. etc. He died in 1894.

A FAMILY PORTRAIT.
Grandmother’s mother; her age, I guess,
Thirteen summers, or something leas:
Girlish bust, but womanly air;
Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair.
Lips that lover has never kissed:
Taper fingers and slender wrist:
Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade;
So they painted the little maid.

O, Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.!
Strange is the gift that I owe to you:
Such a gift as never a king
Save to daughter or son might bring-
All my tenure of heart and hand.
All my title to house and land:
Mother and sister and child and wife
And joy and sorrow and death and lifel

What if a hundred years ago
Those close shut lips had answered No.
When forth the tremulous question came
That cost the maiden her Norman name,
And under the folds that look so still
The bodice swelled with the bosom’s thrill?
Should I be I, or would it be
One-tenth another, to nine-tenths me?

Soft is the breath of a maiden’s Yев:
Not the light gossamer stirs with less;
But never a cable that holds so fast
Through all the battles of wave and blast,
And never an echo of speech or song
That lives in the babbling air so long!
There were tones in the voice that whispered then
You may hear today in a hundred men.