The Two Streams

By Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. 1809–1894 Oliver Wendell Holmes

Behold the rocky wall

That down its sloping sides

Pours the swift rain-drops, blending, as they fall,

In rushing river-tides!

Yon stream, whose sources run

Turned by a pebble’s edge,

Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun

Through the cleft mountain-ledge.

The slender rill had strayed,

But for the slanting stone,

To evening’s ocean, with the tangled braid

Of foam-flecked Oregon.

So from the heights of Will

Life’s parting stream descends,

And, as a moment turns its slender rill,

Each widening torrent bends,—

From the same cradle’s side,

From the same mother’s knee,—

One to long darkness and the frozen tide,

One to the Peaceful Sea!

Biography

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was a brilliant doctor who was well known for his witty lectures at Harvard. Also a poet and essayist, Holmes’s prose series “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table” first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly with its inaugural issue in 1857. A year later it was published as a book, which also included some of his most memorable poetry.

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