Watch the Guy

Watch the guy who mixes

 

          health potions

 

          – with wealth notions.                        

- eab, 8/7/09

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DEATH – ONCE RARE

Time was when one, my life had flown,

(And her, Grandma, I’d hardly known).

Death had only one beyond life’s shore;

But alas, that time is no more.

 

Years tocked by before another,

(He was my only brother);

Left the living for the dead.

Seventeen years his tombstone said.

 

Two more of my grandparents died,

(Death had life again defied) 

Before school days were through,

Grisly death was no longer “new.”

 

Uncles, Aunts kept slipping away,

(during college, and since that day)

Until death had taken them all;

Like the last leaf in the fall.

 

Now, only a few days go by,

(Death, you will someday die.)

Just a few days or weeks apart,

News comes, another did depart.

 

Now many I have known in life,

(Most in joy – OK, a few in strife.)

Have taken the flight up – or down,

To meet Heaven’s smile or Its frown. 

 

What once was rare, an unknown thing,

(Death, you WILL loose your sting.)

Has become too well-known of late.

Death, the caller at ever gate.

 

Death follows also on my trail.

(By “slow freight” or airline’s sail)

Sooner or later my friends will hear,

That death for me came near, too near.

 

And when that news shall quickly flow,

(You know how death’s tidings go)

God, in thy mercy, let my last flight be.

Upward, always to be with Thee.

                – eab, 8/29/99

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Oliver W Holmes – birth, 8/29/1809

O Love divine, that stooped to share
Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear!
On Thee we cast each earthborn care;
We smile at pain while Thou art near.

Though long the weary way we tread,
And sorrow crown each lingering year,
No path we shun, no darkness dread,
Our hearts still whispering, “Thou art near!”

When drooping pleasure turns to grief,
And trembling faith is changed to fear,
The murmuring wind, the quivering leaf,
Shall softly tell us Thou art near!

On Thee we fling our burdening woe,
O Love divine, forever dear!
Content to suffer while we know,
Living and dying, Thou art near!

Oliver W Holmes was born this date, 8/29/1809, Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts.  He was professor of ana­to­my and phys­i­ol­o­gy and later dean at Har­vard Med­i­cal School.  He was a poet – wrote “Old Ironsides” and “The Chambered Nautilus.”  (His son Ol­i­ver Wen­dell Holmes, Jr. became Su­preme Court Jus­tice.)  Holmes died 10/7/1894, Bos­ton, Mass­a­chu­setts.

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