The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Volume 07: Songs of Many Seasons

Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote verse that could cut like a scalpel and glow like a hearth fire, and this volume shows exactly why the "Brahmins of Boston" mattered. "Songs of Many Seasons" moves through the calendar of a human life, from the fresh air of spring mornings to the long shadows of autumn reflection. Here you'll find the famous wit that made Holmes the darling of 19th-century salons, but also a deeper current: the melancholy of a doctor who knew too much about endings, the fierce pride of a Union man watching his country tear itself apart, and the quiet awe of a man watching the seasons wheel overhead year after year. The opening poem "Opening the Window" releases his "captive rhymes" into the world like birds from a cage, and what follows lives up to that image of liberation. Whether mourning lost friends in "In the Quiet Days" or grappling with the Costs of war in "To Canaan," Holmes proves himself a poet who understood that joy and sorrow are not opposites but dance partners. For readers who trust poetry to do what prose cannot: to hold grief and gladness in the same breath.