The Last Leaf

I first started photographing graves of the well-known about a year ago, quite by accident. Since then, with the encouragement of pocho and others, I've combed cemeteries throughout the Boston area looking for graves of notable men and women. Most of the graves I've photographed so far are of writers -- poets, philosophers, and novelists. Oliver Wendell Holmes was an American physician and poet who wrote the well-known poem "Old Ironsides" about the USS Constitution.

I've slacked off a bit on my "famous grave" project, but there are a few I'd like to photograph before winter arrives, and this was one of them.

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The Last Leaf
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

I saw him once before,
As he passed by the door,
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o'er the ground
With his cane.

They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.

But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan,
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
"They are gone!"

The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.

My grandmamma has said--
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago--
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow;

But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff,
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.

I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!

And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.