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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.Old Ironsides
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Related Poems
“The Star-Spangled Banner” by Francis Scott Key (1814)
Although separated from Holmes’s poem by a generation, Key’s poem, written as he watched the heroic defense of Fort McHenry in September 1814, can be compared with “Old Ironsides” as expressions of national pride and military determination that both became elements of America’s rising new patriotic culture. Like Holmes, Key draws, ironically enough, on British prosody models to celebrate American military prowess.
“The Chambered Nautilus” by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1858)
Another popular poem by Holmes, this work is a nature parable. The poet sees the heroic efforts of the sea creature as it structures its shell-home against the vicissitudes of nature, the ocean, and time as symbol for every individual’s effort to prevail against tribulations. Much as “Old Ironsides” moves in the closing stanza to an aspirational meditation of mortality, this poem sees nature as teacher and the poet as thoughtful and sensitive student.
“The Building of the Ship” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1869)
Written a generation after Holmes’s ode to the warship, this poem, penned by a fellow Boston Brahmin, explores Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s metaphor of the power, elegance, and majesty of a well-crafted ship.
Related Titles
By these authors
The Chambered Nautilus
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
The World's Best Poetry, Volume 5 (Part 1): Nature
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mary Mapes Dodge, George Darley, William Motherwell, George Eliot, John Milton, Clement Scott, George Arnold, Robert Browning, James Thomson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., William Ernest Henley, Denis Florence MacCarthy, William Cullen Bryant, John Sterling, John Clare, Izaak Walton, Matthew Arnold, James Whitcomb Riley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edward Jenner, William Gilmore Simms, Charles G.D. Roberts, Henry Timrod, William Cox Bennett, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman, George MacDonald, William Shakespeare, Matthias Claudius, Alexander Hume, James Beattie, Thomas Gray, Craig Franklin, John Cunningham, Norman Rowland Gale, James Gates Percival, Joel Benton, Thomas Heywood, Richard Hovey, Anna Boynton Averill, Charles Sangster, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dora Hill Read Goodale, Joanna Baillie, Thomas Nashe, Henry Wotton, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, John Howard Bryant, John G.C. Brainard, Thomas Campbell, Eduard Mörike, Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Morris, David Gray, William Cowper, W.B. Yeats, William Prescott Foster, Richard Henry Dana Jr., Thomas Carew, William Howitt, John B. Tabb, Jones Very, Henry Fielding, Barry Cornwall, Samuel Daniel, John Keats, Homer, George Francis Savage-Armstrong, John Leyden, Tomas Peter, Thomas Hood, Philip Pendleton Cooke, Richard Watson Gilder, Ethelwyn Wetherald, William Wordsworth, Euripides, Joseph Blanco White, Edmund Clarence Stedman, G.W. Pettee, Robert Tannahill, Ebenezer Jones, John Chalkhill, Abraham Cowley, Paul Hamilton Hayne, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Russell Lowell, Andrew Marvell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lisle Bowles, Leanne Yau, Charles Harpur, Sonia, Edith M. Thomas, Charles Kingsley, Lord Byron, Ebenezer Elliott, Benjamin Franklin Taylor, Richard Henry Horne, Jason in Panama, Walter Scott, Hartley Coleridge, Duncan Campbell Scott, Alfred Tennyson, John Davies, Aristophanes, Charles G. Eastman, Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald, William Browne, Robert Burns, Samuel Rogers, Ludwig H.C. Hölty, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Celia Laighton Thaxter