The Last Reader
by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr (1809-1894)

I sometimes sit beneath a tree
   And read my own sweet songs;
Though naught they may to others be,
   Each humble line prolongs
A tone that might have passed away,
But for that scarce remembered lay.

I keep them like a lock or leaf
   That some dear girl has given;
Frail record of an hour, as brief
   As sunset clouds in heaven,
But spreading purple twilight still
High over memory’s shadowed hill.

They lie upon my pathway bleak,
   Those flowers that once ran wild,
As on a father’s careworn cheek
   The ringlets of his child;
The golden mingling with the gray,
And stealing half its snows away.

What care I though the dust is spread
   Around these yellow leaves,
Or o’er them his sarcastic thread
   Oblivion’s insect weaves?
Though weeds are tangled on the stream,
It still reflects my morning’s beam.

And therefore love I such as smile
   On these neglected songs,
Nor deem that flattery’s needless wile
   My opening bosom wrongs;
For who would trample, at my side,
A few pale buds, my garden’s pride?

It may be that my scanty ore
   Long years have washed away,
And where were golden sands before
   Is naught but common clay;
Still something sparkles in the sun
For memory to look back upon.

And when my name no more is heard,
   My lyre no more is known,
Still let me, like a winter’s bird,
   In silence and alone,
Fold over them the weary wing
Once flashing through the dews of spring.

Yes, let my fancy fondly wrap
   My youth in its decline,
And riot in the rosy lap
   Of thoughts that once were mine,
And give the worm my little store
When the last reader reads no more!

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