"Teachers of teachers! yours the task, Noblest that noble minds can ask, High up Aonia's murmurous mount To watch, to guard the sacred fount That feeds the stream below. To guide the hurrying flood that fills A thousand silvery, rippling rills In ever widening flow.
Rich is the harvest from the fields That bounteous nature kindly yields; But fairer growths enrich the soil Ploughed deep by thought and wearied toil, In learning's broad domain. And where the leaves, the flowers, the fruits, Without your watering at the roots To fill each branching vein?
Welcome! the author's firmest friends, Your voice the surest Godspeed lends. Of you the growing mind demands The patient care, the guiding hands Through all the mists of morn. And knowing well the future's need, Your prescient wisdom sows the seed To flower in years unborn."
It will be remembered that the last time Doctor Holmes appeared in public to read a poem was on May 28, 1893, when he attended the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the reorganization of the Boston Young Men's Christian Union. The beautiful hymn he wrote for this occasion is the sweet, simple expression of his own lifelong creed:
"Our Father! while our hearts unlearn The creeds that wrong thy name, Still let our hallowed altars burn With faith's undying flame.
Not by the lightning's gleam of wrath Our souls thy face shall see, The star of love must light the path That leads to heaven and thee.
Help us to read our Master's will Through every darkening stain That clouds his sacred image still, And see him once again,
The brother man, the pitying friend Who weeps for human woes, Whose pleading words of pardon blend With cries of raging foes.
If, 'mid the gathering storms of doubt Our hearts grow faint and cold, The strength we cannot live without, Thy love will not withhold.
Our prayers accept; our sins forgive; Our youthful zeal renew; Shape for us holier lives to live, And nobler work to do!"
The eighty-fifth birthday of Doctor Holmes was quietly spent at his pleasant country home in Beverly.
"The burden of years sits lightly upon me," he remarked to a friend that day, "but after fourscore years the encroachments of time make themselves felt with rapidly increasing progress. The twelfth septennial period has always seemed to me as one of the natural boundaries of life. One who has lived to complete his eighty-fourth year has had his full share, even of an old man's allowance. Whatever is granted over that is a prodigal indulgence of nature. When one can no longer hear the lark, when he can no longer recognize the faces he passes on the street, when he has to watch his steps, when it becomes more and more difficult for him to recall names, he is reminded at every moment that he must spare himself, or nature will not spare him the penalties she exacts for overtaxing his declining powers."