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Title: What I Have Come For
Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes [
More Titles by Holmes]
1873
I HAVE come with my verses--I think I may claim
It is not the first time I have tried on the same.
They were puckered in rhyme, they were wrinkled in wit;
But your hearts were so large that they made them a fit.
I have come--not to tease you with more of my rhyme,
But to feel as I did in the blessed old time;
I want to hear him with the Brobdingnag laugh--
We count him at least as three men and a half.
I have come to meet judges so wise and so grand
That I shake in my shoes while they're shaking my hand;
And the prince among merchants who put back the crown
When they tried to enthrone him the King of the Town.
I have come to see George--Yes, I think there are four,
If they all were like these I could wish there were more.
I have come to see one whom we used to call "Jim,"
I want to see--oh, don't I want to see him?
I have come to grow young--on my word I declare
I have thought I detected a change in my hair!
One hour with "The Boys" will restore it to brown--
And a wrinkle or two I expect to rub down.
Yes, that's what I've come for, as all of us come;
When I meet the dear Boys I could wish I were dumb.
You asked me, you know, but it's spoiling the fun;
I have told what I came for; my ditty is done.
[The end]
Oliver Wendell Holmes's poem: What I Have Come For
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