A MEMORY.

A MEMORY.

  "Indulgent Memory wakes, and, lo! they live!"
  —RODGERS

  Deathless, while the years are flying,
  And all lesser hopes are dying.
  To my widowed heart near lying
      By a life-time's love embalmed,
  Is a memory, dear and tender,
  And in dreams its bygone splendour
  Sweetest, holiest, balm can render
      To my grief, by Time uncalmed.

  In life's morning, young and early
  Glistening fair through dew-drops pearly,
  Burst a bud that promised fairly
      Through the length of future days.
  Ah! it charmed my passion'd dreaming,
  Bathed in beauty's brightness, beaming
  Fadeless still, and deathless seeming
      In fond Hope's delusive haze.

  And, as when in wild December,
  June's calm twilights we remember,
  So this dream in shadowy splendour

  Ever haunts my lonely way;
  And I see in fond delusion,
  Glowing as in light Elysian,
  The entrancing, old-time vision
        Doom'd so early to decay.

  Days when Hope, how false! still flaunted
  Through my dreamings, love enchanted,
  Framed by busy Fancy, haunted
        By glad visions of delight,—
  Morns of light, and sunsets golden,
  Dreams of legends, grand and olden,
  Hopes for future years, withholden
        From our youthful, yearning sight.

  Past and gone! Ah! vain my sighing,—
  Hope's dead leaves are round me lying,
  But their fragrances, undying,
        Like a hallowed incense rise;
  And I feel, with joy unspoken,
  That the spirit love unbroken
  Leaves this Memory for a token
        Of its truth, that never dies.

  In that land whose beauty vernal
  Through tried ages blooms eternal
  Thou, in bliss undreamed, supernal
        Baskest in the glory-light
  Where celestial joys inspire
  All heaven's vast, unnumbered choir
  With sweet songs that never tire,
        Through the fadeless summer bright.

  Here, how sad this dreary roaming,
  Through the shadows of earth's gloaming,
  Waiting for the longed-for coming
        Of the lingering Morning Star;
  But swift time is onward fleeting—
  Backward is the past retreating,
  Nearer, nearer draws our meeting
        In the future, dim and far.