258

I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER.

I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER.

I REMEMBER, I remember,
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon,
Nor brought too long a day,
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away!

I remember, I remember,
The roses, red and white,
The violets, and the lily-cups,
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set

The laburnum on his birth-day,-
The tree is living yet!

I remember, I remember,

Where I was used to swing,

And thought the air must rush as fresh

To swallows on the wing;

My spirit flew in feathers then,

That is so heavy now,

And summer pools could hardly cool

The fever on my brow!

I remember, I remember,
The fir trees dark and high;

I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,

But now 'tis little joy

To know I'm farther off from Heav'n

Than when I was a boy.

T. Hood.

THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS.

OFT in the stilly night

Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Fond Memory brings the light Of other days around me;

The smiles, the tears

Of boyhood's years,

The words of love then spoken

The eyes that shone,

Now dimm'd and gone,

The cheerful hearts now broken!

Thus in the stilly night

Ere slumber's chain has bound me,

Sad Memory brings the light

Of other days around me.

When I remember all

The friends so link'd together

I've seen around me fall

Like leaves in wintry weather,

I feel like one

Who treads alone

Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!

260

THE RECOLLECTION.

Thus in the stilly night

Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
Sad Memory brings the light

Of other days around me.

T. Moore.

THE RECOLLECTION.

Now the last day of many days
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead,
Rise, Memory, and write its praise!
Up, do thy wonted work! come, trace
The epitaph of glory fled,

For now the Earth has changed its face.
A frown is on the Heaven's brow.

We wander'd to the Pine Forest
That skirts the Ocean's foam;
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.

The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep

The smile of Heaven lay;

It seem'd as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies
Which scatter'd from above the sun
A light of Paradise!

We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,

Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced,—

And soothed by every azure breath
That under heaven is blown
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own:

Now all the tree-tops lay asleep
Like green waves on the sea,
As still as in the silent deep
The ocean-woods may be.

How calm it was!-the silence there
By such a chain was bound,
That even the busy woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness;

The breath of peace we drew
With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew.
There seem'd from the remotest seat
Of the wide mountain waste
To the soft flower beneath our feet
A magic circle traced,

A spirit interfused around,
A thrilling silent life;

To momentary peace it bound

Our mortal nature's strife;—

And still I felt the centre of

The magic circle there

Was one fair Form that fill'd with love The lifeless atmosphere.

We paused beside the pools that lie

Under the forest bough;

Each seem'd as 'twere a little sky

Gulf'd in a world below;

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THE RECOLLECTION.

A firmament of purple light
Which in the dark earth lay,

More boundless than the depth of night
And purer than the day—

In which the lovely forests grew

As in the upper air,

More perfect both in shape and hue
Than any spreading there.

There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn,
And through the dark green wood

The white sun twinkling like the dawn

Out of a speckled cloud.

Sweet views which in our world above

Can never well be seen

Were imaged by the water's love
Of that fair forest green:
And all was interfused beneath
With an Elysian glow,

An atmosphere without a breath,
A softer day below.

Like one beloved, the scene had lent

To the dark water's breast

Its every leaf and lineament

With more than truth exprest;
Until an envious wind crept by,

Like an unwelcome thought
Which from the mind's too faithful eye
Blots one dear image out.

-Though Thou art ever fair and kind,
The forests ever green,

Less oft is peace in Shelley's mind

Than calm in waters seen!

P. B. Shelley.