Remembrance
THOU say’st, ‘I will remember,’ and thine eyes
Are the pure fonts of tender verities;
And thou would’st give, unasked, thy life to-day,
Could thine avail, to rescue or delay:
But to remember — in that promise lies
Achievement that o’er-arches sacrifice.
Shall life remember what death holds in fee?
The idlest hope is hope of memory.
Shall Love, unresting, with remembrance dwell
A watcher? Who shall watch the sentinel?
Who chide the faithless, the forgetful ward?
Love, for whose eyes the vast of heaven was starred
With lights more fleeting than his earth-born fires —
Is it so hard to quiet his desires?
Must time, then, marshal his eternities,
The centuries’ line embattle, ere he sees
Love at his mercy? A year’s smiling curve,
The space that parts two vintages, will serve
To blunt, to blur, remembrance. For our debt
Is lifeward, and to breathe is to forget.
Are the pure fonts of tender verities;
And thou would’st give, unasked, thy life to-day,
Could thine avail, to rescue or delay:
But to remember — in that promise lies
Achievement that o’er-arches sacrifice.
Shall life remember what death holds in fee?
The idlest hope is hope of memory.
Shall Love, unresting, with remembrance dwell
A watcher? Who shall watch the sentinel?
Who chide the faithless, the forgetful ward?
Love, for whose eyes the vast of heaven was starred
With lights more fleeting than his earth-born fires —
Is it so hard to quiet his desires?
Must time, then, marshal his eternities,
The centuries’ line embattle, ere he sees
Love at his mercy? A year’s smiling curve,
The space that parts two vintages, will serve
To blunt, to blur, remembrance. For our debt
Is lifeward, and to breathe is to forget.
I shall go hence; and thou wilt love and mourn,
And for a time I shall to thee return
In all we shared of life’s full harvestings:
My eyes shall meet thee in unnumbered things,
In flowers, in wavings of the fruited grain,
In the brook’s motion, in the rain-swept pane;
I shall find voices in the winds, the moans
Of sea-waves, and the forest’s undertones;
The gorge shall take my part, and the green glades
Shall urge thee to remember, and the shades
Of evening, and the vesper’s solemn chime:
These shall be bonds to hold thee — for a time.
And for a time I shall to thee return
In all we shared of life’s full harvestings:
My eyes shall meet thee in unnumbered things,
In flowers, in wavings of the fruited grain,
In the brook’s motion, in the rain-swept pane;
I shall find voices in the winds, the moans
Of sea-waves, and the forest’s undertones;
The gorge shall take my part, and the green glades
Shall urge thee to remember, and the shades
Of evening, and the vesper’s solemn chime:
These shall be bonds to hold thee — for a time.
But change shall come, and on thy first distress
Creep dumb encroachings of forgetfulness.
Days that were mine shall shrink like ebbing moons,
Till in the lapse of circling nights and noons,
Unmarked, there glide into eternity
A day unvisited with thoughts of me.
Down shall it pass within time’s dusk and haze,
The day thou first forgett’st, like other days.
Shall it stand, lonely, by that Stygian sea
In hated, uncompanioned obloquy?
A comrade comes, to meet it on the sands;
Another; yet another; then in bands,
Trooping apace, they come: and I shall feel
Another coil of the great darkness steal
Around my bosom, and another fold
Of silence lap me in its vesture cold.
Creep dumb encroachings of forgetfulness.
Days that were mine shall shrink like ebbing moons,
Till in the lapse of circling nights and noons,
Unmarked, there glide into eternity
A day unvisited with thoughts of me.
Down shall it pass within time’s dusk and haze,
The day thou first forgett’st, like other days.
Shall it stand, lonely, by that Stygian sea
In hated, uncompanioned obloquy?
A comrade comes, to meet it on the sands;
Another; yet another; then in bands,
Trooping apace, they come: and I shall feel
Another coil of the great darkness steal
Around my bosom, and another fold
Of silence lap me in its vesture cold.
Still shalt thou think of me, nor with disdain —
Art thou not thou? —but with love-nurtured pain;
Only from moon to moon, thy thoughts shall be
Like scantier islets in a widening sea.
Fair are those isles, but few — the fragments rent
By earthquake from some primal continent.
And there shall come a severance in thy thought;
The bonds which earth and her fair aspects wrought
’Twixt thee and me shall loosen one by one;
I shall not visit thee in star or sun,
Nor raise a signal from the April lea;
The skies shall speak of azure, not of me.
I shall be parted from the warmth of June,
From dawnings, and the cloud-wreath on the moon;
And I shall pass from bird-note and bright wing,
From frostwork, from the sorcery of spring.
The fickle forest and the faithless seas
Which I had charged with signs and messages,
Speak not to thee, or speak with other tongue.
What shall avail? Thou livest, thou art young:
Youth, life, are thine, and thou must love thine own;
He should not die who fears to be alone.
Art thou not thou? —but with love-nurtured pain;
Only from moon to moon, thy thoughts shall be
Like scantier islets in a widening sea.
Fair are those isles, but few — the fragments rent
By earthquake from some primal continent.
And there shall come a severance in thy thought;
The bonds which earth and her fair aspects wrought
’Twixt thee and me shall loosen one by one;
I shall not visit thee in star or sun,
Nor raise a signal from the April lea;
The skies shall speak of azure, not of me.
I shall be parted from the warmth of June,
From dawnings, and the cloud-wreath on the moon;
And I shall pass from bird-note and bright wing,
From frostwork, from the sorcery of spring.
The fickle forest and the faithless seas
Which I had charged with signs and messages,
Speak not to thee, or speak with other tongue.
What shall avail? Thou livest, thou art young:
Youth, life, are thine, and thou must love thine own;
He should not die who fears to be alone.
A time shall come at last when memory sets
Even in its dawn; the buoyant mind forgets
In seeking to remember. Thou wilt say:
‘A faithful heart — (How yon sun’s parting ray
Whitens the olives!) one that loved me. — (Look!
The glow-worms dance already where the brook
Turns seaward by the marshes!) Spake we not
Of something sad but now? — I scarce recall —
Perchance that song in Lucia, or the fall
Of yellow leaves last night in quiet air!’
And I shall be as one that treads a stair
That winds into a crypt, and, at a turn,
Sees the last square through whose dim panels burn
The faint remains of daylight from his eyes
Parted, and is an exile from the skies.
Even in its dawn; the buoyant mind forgets
In seeking to remember. Thou wilt say:
‘A faithful heart — (How yon sun’s parting ray
Whitens the olives!) one that loved me. — (Look!
The glow-worms dance already where the brook
Turns seaward by the marshes!) Spake we not
Of something sad but now? — I scarce recall —
Perchance that song in Lucia, or the fall
Of yellow leaves last night in quiet air!’
And I shall be as one that treads a stair
That winds into a crypt, and, at a turn,
Sees the last square through whose dim panels burn
The faint remains of daylight from his eyes
Parted, and is an exile from the skies.
Months shall glide past and memory shall become
Formless and nameless, recordless and dumb;
A something houseless, vagrant, unassigned;
A film, a blur, a vapor in the mind;
A faint disquiet in the mid-day proud;
A sadder edging on the gloomy cloud
Trailed in the wake of sunset; a shade less
Of glory in the young dawn’s hopefulness:
Then shall death open the last gates of doom,
And lock me in a tomb within the tomb.
Formless and nameless, recordless and dumb;
A something houseless, vagrant, unassigned;
A film, a blur, a vapor in the mind;
A faint disquiet in the mid-day proud;
A sadder edging on the gloomy cloud
Trailed in the wake of sunset; a shade less
Of glory in the young dawn’s hopefulness:
Then shall death open the last gates of doom,
And lock me in a tomb within the tomb.