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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Poem At The Centennial Anniversary Dinner Of The Massachusetts Medical Society</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">JUNE 8, 1881</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">THREE paths there be where Learning's favored sons,<br>Trained in the schools which hold her favored ones,<br>Follow their several stars with separate aim;<br>Each has its honors, each its special claim.<br>Bred in the fruitful cradle of the East,<br>First, as of oldest lineage, comes the Priest;<br>The Lawyer next, in wordy conflict strong,<br>Full armed to battle for the right,--or wrong;<br>Last, he whose calling finds its voice in deeds,<br>Frail Nature's helper in her sharpest needs.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Each has his gifts, his losses and his gains,<br>Each his own share of pleasures and of pains;<br>No life-long aim with steadfast eye pursued<br>Finds a smooth pathway all with roses strewed;<br>Trouble belongs to man of woman born,--<br>Tread where he may, his foot will find its thorn.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Of all the guests at life's perennial feast,<br>Who of her children sits above the Priest?<br>For him the broidered robe, the carven seat,<br>Pride at his beck, and beauty at his feet,<br>For him the incense fumes, the wine is poured,<br>Himself a God, adoring and adored!<br>His the first welcome when our hearts rejoice,<br>His in our dying ear the latest voice,<br>Font, altar, grave, his steps on all attend,<br>Our staff, our stay, our all but heavenly friend!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Where is the meddling hand that dares to probe<br>The secret grief beneath his sable robe?<br>How grave his port! how every gesture tells<br>Here truth abides, here peace forever dwells;<br>Vex not his lofty soul with comments vain;<br>Faith asks no questions; silence, ye profane!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Alas! too oft while all is calm without<br>The stormy spirit wars with endless doubt;<br>This is the mocking spectre, scarce concealed<br>Behind tradition's bruised and battered shield.<br>He sees the sleepless critic, age by age,<br>Scrawl his new readings on the hallowed page,<br>The wondrous deeds that priests and prophets saw<br>Dissolved in legend, crystallized in law,<br>And on the soil where saints and martyrs trod<br>Altars new builded to the Unknown God;<br>His shrines imperilled, his evangels torn,--<br>He dares not limp, but ah! how sharp his thorn!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Yet while God's herald questions as he reads<br>The outworn dogmas of his ancient creeds,<br>Drops from his ritual the exploded verse,<br>Blots from its page the Athanasian curse,<br>Though by the critic's dangerous art perplexed,<br>His holy life is Heaven's unquestioned text;<br>That shining guidance doubt can never mar,--<br>The pillar's flame, the light of Bethlehem's star!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Strong is the moral blister that will draw<br>Laid on the conscience of the Man of Law<br>Whom blindfold Justice lends her eyes to see<br>Truth in the scale that holds his promised fee.<br>What! Has not every lie its truthful side,<br>Its honest fraction, not to be denied?<br>Per contra,--ask the moralist,--in sooth<br>Has not a lie its share in every truth?<br>Then what forbids an honest man to try<br>To find the truth that lurks in every lie,<br>And just as fairly call on truth to yield<br>The lying fraction in its breast concealed?<br>So the worst rogue shall claim a ready friend<br>His modest virtues boldly to defend,<br>And he who shows the record of a saint<br>See himself blacker than the devil could paint.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">What struggles to his captive soul belong<br>Who loves the right, yet combats for the wrong,<br>Who fights the battle he would fain refuse,<br>And wins, well knowing that he ought to lose,<br>Who speaks with glowing lips and look sincere<br>In spangled words that make the worse appear<br>The better reason; who, behind his mask,<br>Hides his true self and blushes at his task,--<br>What quips, what quillets cheat the inward scorn<br>That mocks such triumph? Has he not his thorn?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Yet stay thy judgment; were thy life the prize,<br>Thy death the forfeit, would thy cynic eyes<br>See fault in him who bravely dares defend<br>The cause forlorn, the wretch without a friend<br>Nay, though the rightful side is wisdom's choice,<br>Wrong has its rights and claims a champion's voice;<br>Let the strong arm be lifted for the weak,<br>For the dumb lips the fluent pleader speak;--<br>When with warm 'rebel' blood our street was dyed<br>Who took, unawed, the hated hirelings' side?<br>No greener civic wreath can Adams claim,<br>No brighter page the youthful Quincy's name!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>How blest is he who knows no meaner strife<br>Than Art's long battle with the foes of life!<br>No doubt assails him, doing still his best,<br>And trusting kindly Nature for the rest;<br>No mocking conscience tears the thin disguise<br>That wraps his breast, and tells him that he lies.<br>He comes: the languid sufferer lifts his head<br>And smiles a welcome from his weary bed;<br>He speaks: what music like the tones that tell,<br>'Past is the hour of danger,--all is well!'<br>How can he feel the petty stings of grief<br>Whose cheering presence always brings relief?<br>What ugly dreams can trouble his repose<br>Who yields himself to soothe another's woes?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Hour after hour the busy day has found<br>The good physician on his lonely round;<br>Mansion and hovel, low and lofty door,<br>He knows, his journeys every path explore,--<br>Where the cold blast has struck with deadly chill<br>The sturdy dweller on the storm-swept hill,<br>Where by the stagnant marsh the sickening gale<br>Has blanched the poisoned tenants of the vale,<br>Where crushed and maimed the bleeding victim lies,<br>Where madness raves, where melancholy sighs,<br>And where the solemn whisper tells too plain<br>That all his science, all his art, were vain.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">How sweet his fireside when the day is done<br>And cares have vanished with the setting sun!<br>Evening at last its hour of respite brings<br>And on his couch his weary length he flings.<br>Soft be thy pillow, servant of mankind,<br>Lulled by an opiate Art could never find;<br>Sweet be thy slumber,--thou hast earned it well,--<br>Pleasant thy dreams! Clang! goes the midnight bell!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Darkness and storm! the home is far away<br>That waits his coming ere the break of day;<br>The snow-clad pines their wintry plumage toss,--<br>Doubtful the frozen stream his road must cross;<br>Deep lie the drifts, the slanted heaps have shut<br>The hardy woodman in his mountain hut,--<br>Why should thy softer frame the tempest brave?<br>Hast thou no life, no health, to lose or save?<br>Look! read the answer in his patient eyes,--<br>For him no other voice when suffering cries;<br>Deaf to the gale that all around him blows,<br>A feeble whisper calls him,--and he goes.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Or seek the crowded city,--summer's heat<br>Glares burning, blinding, in the narrow street,<br>Still, noisome, deadly, sleeps the envenomed air,<br>Unstirred the yellow flag that says 'Beware!'<br>Tempt not thy fate,--one little moment's breath<br>Bears on its viewless wing the seeds of death;<br>Thou at whose door the gilded chariots stand,<br>Whose dear-bought skill unclasps the miser's hand,<br>Turn from thy fatal quest, nor cast away<br>That life so precious; let a meaner prey<br>Feed the destroyer's hunger; live to bless<br>Those happier homes that need thy care no less!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Smiling he listens; has he then a charm<br>Whose magic virtues peril can disarm?<br>No safeguard his; no amulet he wears,<br>Too well he knows that Nature never spares<br>Her truest servant, powerless to defend<br>From her own weapons her unshrinking friend.<br>He dares the fate the bravest well might shun,<br>Nor asks reward save only Heaven's 'Well done!'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Such are the toils, the perils that he knows,<br>Days without rest and nights without repose,<br>Yet all unheeded for the love he bears<br>His art, his kind, whose every grief he shares.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Harder than these to know how small the part<br>Nature's proud empire yields to striving Art;<br>How, as the tide that rolls around the sphere<br>Laughs at the mounds that delving arms uprear,--<br>Spares some few roods of oozy earth, but still<br>Wastes and rebuilds the planet at its will,<br>Comes at its ordered season, night or noon,<br>Led by the silver magnet of the moon,--<br>So life's vast tide forever comes and goes,<br>Unchecked, resistless, as it ebbs and flows.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Hardest of all, when Art has done her best,<br>To find the cuckoo brooding in her nest;<br>The shrewd adventurer, fresh from parts unknown,<br>Kills off the patients Science thought her own;<br>Towns from a nostrum-vender get their name,<br>Fences and walls the cure-all drug proclaim,<br>Plasters and pads the willing world beguile,<br>Fair Lydia greets us with astringent smile,<br>Munchausen's fellow-countryman unlocks<br>His new Pandora's globule-holding box,<br>And as King George inquired, with puzzled grin,<br>'How--how the devil get the apple in?'<br>So we ask how,--with wonder-opening eyes,--<br>Such pygmy pills can hold such giant lies!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Yes, sharp the trials, stern the daily tasks<br>That suffering Nature from her servant asks;<br>His the kind office dainty menials scorn,<br>His path how hard,--at every step a thorn!<br>What does his saddening, restless slavery buy?<br>What save a right to live, a chance to die,--<br>To live companion of disease and pain,<br>To die by poisoned shafts untimely slain?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Answer from hoary eld, majestic shades,--<br>From Memphian courts, from Delphic colonnades,<br>Speak in the tones that Persia's despot heard<br>When nations treasured every golden word<br>The wandering echoes wafted o'er the seas,<br>From the far isle that held Hippocrates;<br>And thou, best gift that Pergamus could send<br>Imperial Rome, her noblest Caesar's friend,<br>Master of masters, whose unchallenged sway<br>Not bold Vesalius dared to disobey;<br>Ye who while prophets dreamed of dawning times<br>Taught your rude lessons in Salerno's rhymes,<br>And ye, the nearer sires, to whom we owe<br>The better share of all the best we know,<br>In every land an ever-growing train,<br>Since wakening Science broke her rusted chain,--<br>Speak from the past, and say what prize was sent<br>To crown the toiling years so freely spent!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=472511" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">List while they speak:<br>In life's uneven road<br>Our willing hands have eased our brothers' load;<br>One forehead smoothed, one pang of torture less,<br>One peaceful hour a sufferer's couch to bless,<br>The smile brought back to fever's parching lips,<br>The light restored to reason in eclipse,<br>Life's treasure rescued like a burning brand<br>Snatched from the dread destroyer's wasteful hand;<br>Such were our simple records day by day,<br>For gains like these we wore our lives away.<br>In toilsome paths our daily bread we sought,<br>But bread from heaven attending angels brought;<br>Pain was our teacher, speaking to the heart,<br>Mother of pity, nurse of pitying art;<br>Our lesson learned, we reached the peaceful shore<br>Where the pale sufferer asks our aid no more,--<br>These gracious words our welcome, our reward<br>Ye served your brothers; ye have served your Lord!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Oliver+Wendell+Holmes">Oliver Wendell Holmes</a></strong></div>