Oliver Wendell Holmes

Ami & Prunella
May 22, 2017
3 min read

Biography

On August 29th, Oliver Wendell Holmes was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is well-known for being a writer and a Dean of Harvard Medical School. Not only was he an amazing writer, he was also a physician and scientist who discovered the cause of childbed fever and introduced the microscope to medical education. Holmes became presdent of the Boston Medical Library in 1875 and donated a thousand books to the library during his three years of being president. Unfortunately, he passed away on October 7, 1894, leaving three children and his wife, Amelia Lee Jackson.

The Chambered Nautilus

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,

Sails the unshadowed main,—

The venturous bark that flings

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings

In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,

And coral reefs lie bare,

Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;

Wrecked is the ship of pearl!

And every chambered cell,

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,

As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,

Before thee lies revealed,—

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil;

Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,

Stole with soft step its shining archway through,

Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Cacoethes Scribendi

If all the trees in all the woods were men;

And each and every blade of grass a pen;

If every leaf on every shrub and tree

Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea

Were changed to ink, and all earth's living tribes

Had nothing else to do but act as scribes,

And for ten thousand ages, day and night,

The human race should write, and write, and write,

Till all the pens and paper were used up,

And the huge inkstand was an empty cup,

Still would the scribblers clustered round its brink

Call for more pens, more paper, and more ink.

The Chambered Nautilus vs. Cacoethes Scribendi

The Chambered Nautilus and Cacoethes Scribendi have more differences than similarities such as the rhyme scheme, meter, length, and meaning. The rhyme scheme for the Chambered Nautilus is AABBBCC and for Cacoethes Scribendi, the rhyme scheme is AABBCCDDEEFF. The Chambered Nautilus’s meter alternates between pentameter and trimester and the last line of each stanza has a hexameter and for Cacoethes Scribendi, it is only a pentameter. Another difference is the length; Chambered Nautilus has five stanzas with seven lines in each stanza while Cacoethes Scribendi is just one long stanza with 12 lines. The meaning behind each poem is also different, the Chambered Nautilus is about the experiences one goes through and the nautilus symbolizes someone going through many experiences in life. Cacoethes Scribendi talks about greed and how we want more even after all the resources are used up.

However, there are some similarities between the two poems. Both the Chambered Nautilus and Cacoethes have a very deep meaning behind it and are poems of the Romantic Era. The Chambered Nautilus and Cacoethes Scribendi both talk about wanting something. In Cacoethes Scribendi, it talks about wanting more in the future while the Chambered Nautilus talks about looking to the future and growing through experiences. Not only do they both talk about wanting something, both poems ties around nature. In Cacoethes Scribendi, it is about trees and the sea and the Chambered Nautilus is centered around a nautilus.