O better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
This is the poem that made Holmes famous and these are the lines that cause the poem to take a sudden unexpected turn. The occasion for this poem was the announcement of plans to scrap the U.S.S. Constitution (Old Ironsides). The opening stanzas situate the ship as too worthy and honorable to wind up as scrap metal in a junkyard and leads the reader to conclude that speaker will instead suggest that it be preserved in some way. The final stanza commencing with these lines, however, rejects that idea as well and instead offers as a fitting solution that Old Ironsides set sail as a ghost ship with fate determining her final resting place in the only fitting grave: deep beneath the sea.
You see, of course, if you’re not a dunce,
How it went to pieces all at once, —
All at once, and nothing first, —
Just as bubbles do when they burst.
Ostensibly the story of a “one-horse shay” built in a logical way to run a century to the day, there is another story taking place beneath the somewhat jocular and spirited rhyme. The poem moves inexorably toward its conclusion in which despite all expectations of logic and genius, even that which is made whole from the sum of various perfect parts is subject to breaking down and when they do—well, these lines make the consequence clear enough. What the poem is really about, however, is not the one-horse shay, but Calvinist theology of which Holmes was a satirical critic of the first order.
They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.
If Holmes had never written “Old Ironsides” a strong argument can be made that this would be his most famous poem. What is most interesting, perhaps, is that the title references the man described here; it is not a poem about a tree. Then again, what might actually be more interesting is the identity of the subject of the poem. That of who it was said there was no better man was one of the few surviving patriots from the War of Independence still around in 1831: Major Thomas Melville. And, yes, he the grandfather of Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick.
What makes the Healing Art divine?
The bitter drug we buy and sell,
The brands that scorch, the blades that shine,
The scars we leave, the 'cures' we tell?
If the idea of writing about a poem about a meeting of the National Sanitary Association seems just a little unusual, you are right. It is not a poem about a meeting, but for that meeting. First and foremost—based on volume at any rate—Oliver Wendell Holmes’ standing in American literary history as a poet is primarily that of perhaps its single greatest “occasional poet.” Estimates put the number of poems Holmes wrote upon request for an occasion or event or remembrance at around four-hundred. That’s a hefty output even for someone writing from the heart, but the verse Holmes produced on demand was so popular precisely because he could tailor the subject to the fit the occasion. As is demonstrated quite effectively with this opening lines for a very limited target audience.
