Oliver Wendell Holmes, 17 December 1887

HOLMES, Oliver Wendell (1809-1894). Autograph manuscript signed ("Oliver Wendell Holmes"), a fair copy of his poem, "To John Greenleaf Whittier [on his Eightieth Birthday]," [n.p.], 17 December 1887.

One page, 113 x 168mm (mild foxing and dustsoiling, mounted to a board). [With]: a mounted albumen cabinet card of Whittier by W. Notman, Boston (tape affixed to verso). Matted and framed.

On the occasion of Whittier's 80th birthday, Holmes composed this charming verse dedicated to his longtime friend and literary peer: "Friend, whom thy fourscore winters leave more dear / Than when life’s roseate summer on thy cheek / Burned in the flush of manhood’s manliest year, / Lonely, how lonely! is the snowy peak / Thy feet have reached, and mine have climbed so near! / Close on thy footsteps ‘mid the landscape drear / I stretch my hand thine answering grasp to seek, / Warm with the love no rippling rhymes can speak! / Look backward! From thy lofty height survey / Thy years of toil, of peaceful victories won, / Of dreams made real, largest hopes outrun! / Look forward! Brighter than earth’s morning ray / Streams the pure light of Heaven’s unsetting sun, / The unclouded dawn of life’s immortal day!" Whitter returned the favor five years later with "To Oliver Wendell Holmes," the last poem he composed weeks before his death in 1892.