Memories and Recollections

How sad and bad and mad it was— But then, how it was sweet!

Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what’s become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

Ah, did you once see Shelley plain, And did he stop and speak to you, And did you speak to him again? How strange it seems, and new! 2

The holiest of all holidays are those Kept by ourselves in silence and apart; The secret anniversaries of the heart.

I remember the black wharves and the slips, And the sea-tides tossing free; And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the beauty and majesty of the ships, And the magic of the sea.

Glimmering stars of the Great Bear, I never thought I’d be back to see you Shining down on my father’s garden, Nor talk to you ever again from the windows Of this house where I spent my childhood And saw the last of my happiness vanish.

Souls of Poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern? Have ye tippled drink more fine Than mine host’s Canary wine?

He mourns that day so soon has glided by: E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear That falls through the clear ether silently.

Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory; Odors, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken. Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heaped for the beloved’s bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on.

To have seen better days, as who has not Who has seen yesterday?

Gone—glimmering through the dream of things that were.

Some banquet hall deserted, And all but he departed.

Oft in the stilly night, Ere Slumber’s chain has bound me, Fond Memory brings the light Of other days around me; The words of love then spoken; The cheerful hearts now broken.

And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls, Shall long keep his memory green in our souls.

I have had playmates, I have had companions, In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days— All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower.

As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation.

O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive!

The youth, who daily farther from the east At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.

Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore— The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The music in my heart I bore Long after it was heard no more.

Sweet childish days, that were as long As twenty days are now.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to min’? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And days o’ auld lang syne?