Four Letters (Inscribed to Oliver Wendell Holmes)
[In an old almanac of the year 1809, against the date August 29th, there is this record, “Son b.” The sand that was thrown upon the fresh ink seventy years ago can still be seen upon the page.]
Four letters on a yellow page
Writ when the century was young;
A few small grains of shining sand
Across it lightly flung!
A child was born—child nameless yet;
A son to love till life was o’er;
But did no strange, sweet prescience stir,
Teaching of something more?
Thy son! O father, hadst thou known
What now the wide world knows of him,
How had thy pulses thrilled with joy,
How had thine eye grown dim!
Couldst thou, through all the swift, bright years,
Have looked, with glad, far-reaching gaze,
And seen him as he stands to-day,
Crowned with unfading bays—
While Love’s red roses at his feet
Pour all their wealth of rare perfume,
And Truth’s white lilies, pure as snow,
His lofty way illume—
How had thy heart’s strong throbbing shook
The eager pen, the firm right hand,
That threw upon this record quaint
These grains of glittering sand!
O irony of Time and Fate!
That saves and loses, makes and mars,
Keeps the small dust upon the scales,
And blotteth out the stars!
Kingdoms and thrones have passed away;
Conquerors have fallen, empires died,
And countless sons of men gone down
Beneath War’s crimson tide.
The whole wide earth has changed its face;
Nations clasp hands across the seas;
They speak, and winds and waves repeat
The mighty symphonies.
Mountains have bowed their haughty crests,
And opened wide their ponderous doors;
The sea hath gathered in its dead,
Love-wept on alien shores.
Proud cities, wrapped in fire and flame,
Have challenged all the slumbering land;
Yet neither Time nor Change has touched
These few bright grains of sand!