Prev | Current Page 162 | Next

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894

"Autocrat of the Breakfast Table"


Though temples crowd the crumbled brink
O'erhanging truth's eternal flow,
Their tablets bold with WHAT WE THINK,
Their echoes dumb to WHAT WE KNOW;
That one unquestioned text we read,
All doubt beyond, all fear above,
Nor crackling pile nor cursing creed
Can burn or blot it: GOD IS LOVE!

CHAPTER VII

[This particular record is noteworthy principally for containing a
paper by my friend, the Professor, with a poem or two annexed or
intercalated. I would suggest to young persons that they should
pass over it for the present, and read, instead of it, that story
about the young man who was in love with the young lady, and in
great trouble for something like nine pages, but happily married on
the tenth page or thereabouts, which, I take it for granted, will
be contained in the periodical where this is found, unless it
differ from all other publications of the kind. Perhaps, if such
young people will lay the number aside, and take it up ten years,
or a little more, from the present time, they may find something in
it for their advantage. They can't possibly understand it all
now.]
My friend, the Professor, began talking with me one day in a dreary
sort of way. I couldn't get at the difficulty for a good while,
but at last it turned out that somebody had been calling him an old
man.--He didn't mind his students calling him THE old man, he said.


Pages:
150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174