Poems from the Teacups

Poems from the Teacups extracts the verse interludes from Over the Teacups, the 1891 final table-talk volume by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809-1894). Holmes wove poems through all the Breakfast-Table books, and the Teacups verse is the work of his ninth decade, including The Broomstick Train, his fantasy of New England witches powering the new electric streetcars, and the elegiac pieces on age and memory that close his poetic career. Holmes published verse for more than sixty years, from Old Ironsides in 1830 to these final poems, and the late work keeps the metrical polish and conversational ease that marked everything he wrote. The selection makes the Teacups poems available on their own for readers of nineteenth-century American verse. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.