Not premeditated <br /> <br /> <br />THE clock has struck noon; ere it thrice tell the hours <br />We shall meet round the table that blushes with flowers, <br />And I shall blush deeper with shame-driven blood <br />That I came to the banquet and brought not a bud. <br /> <br />Who cares that his verse is a beggar in art <br />If you see through its rags the full throb of his heart? <br />Who asks if his comrade is battered and tanned <br />When he feels his warm soul in the clasp of his hand? <br /> <br />No! be it an epic, or be it a line, <br />The Boys will all love it because it is mine; <br />I sung their last song on the morn of the day <br />That tore from their lives the last blossom of May. <br /> <br />It is not the sunset that glows in the wine, <br />But the smile that beams over it, makes it divine; <br />I scatter these drops, and behold, as they fall, <br />The day-star of memory shines through them all! <br /> <br />And these are the last; they are drops that I stole <br />From a wine-press that crushes the life from the soul, <br />But they ran through my heart and they sprang to my brain <br />Till our twentieth sweet summer was smiling again!<br /><br />Oliver Wendell Holmes<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-impromptu-2/
