Bunker Hill and Other Poems

Bunker Hill and Other Poems gathers patriotic and occasional verse by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809-1894), the Boston physician-poet whose Old Ironsides, written at twenty-one, saved the frigate USS Constitution from the scrapyard and made him famous. The collection takes its title from his verse on the Battle of Bunker Hill, the engagement fought within sight of his Boston home ground, and includes the commemorative and celebratory poems Holmes produced across six decades for civic occasions, class reunions, and national anniversaries. Holmes was the most accomplished occasional poet in nineteenth-century America, and his fluent command of the public poem made him the unofficial laureate of Boston. The collection shows that public voice at full strength. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.