 Selected Poems by Oliver Wendell Holmes Read by Peter Moringer The Height of the Ridiculous I wrote some lines once on a time in wondrous merry mood, and thought, as usual, men would say they were exceeding good. They were so queer, so very queer, I laughed as I would die, albeit in the general way, a sober man am I. I called my servant, and he came. How kind it was of him to mind a slender man like me, he of the mighty limb. These to the printer, I exclaimed, and in my humorous way I added, as a trifling jest, they'll be the devil to pay. He took the paper, and I watched and saw him peep within. At the first line he read, his face was all upon the grin. He read the next, the grin grew broad and shot from ear to ear. He read the third, a chuckling noise I now began to hear. The fourth he broke into a roar. The fifth his waistband split. The sixth he burst five buttons off and tumbled in a fit. Ten days and nights with sleepless eye I watched that wretched man. And since I never dared to write, as funny as I can, the last leaf. I saw him once before, as he passed by the door, and again the pavement stones resound as he totters o'er the ground with his cane. They say that in his prime, ere the pruning knife of time cut him down, not a better man was found by the crier on his round through the town. But now he walks the streets, and he looks at all he meets, sad and worn. And he shakes his feeble head, that it seems as if he said, they are gone. The mossy marbles rest on the lips that he has pressed in their bloom, and the names he loved to hear have been carved for many a year on the tomb. My grandmama has said, poor old lady, she is dead long ago, that he had a Roman nose and his cheek was like a rose in the snow. But now his nose is thin, and it rests upon his chin like a staff, and a crook is in his back and a melancholy crack in his laugh. I know. Sample complete. Ready to continue?