Memory

Memory

'Tis beauteous night; the stars look brightly down
Upon the earth, decked in her robe of snow.
No light gleams at the windows, save my own,
Which gives its cheer to midnight and to me.

And now with noiseless step sweet Memory comes
And leads me gently through her twilight realms.
What poet's tuneful lyre has ever sung
Or delicatest pencil e'er portrayed
The enchanted shadowy land where Memory dwells?

It has its valleys, cheerless, lone, and drear,
Dark-shaded by the mournful cypress-tree;
And yet its sunlit mountain-tops are bathed
In heaven's own blue. Upon its craggy cliffs,
Robed in the dreamy light of distant years,

Are clustered joys serene of other days.
Upon its gentle sloping hillsides bend
The weeping willows o'er the sacred dust
Of dear departed ones; yet in that land,
Where'er our footsteps fall upon the shore,

They that were sleeping rise from out the dust
Of death's long, silent years, and round us stand
As erst they did before the prison tomb
Received their clay within its voiceless halls.
The heavens that bend above that land are hung

With clouds of various hues: some dark and chill,
Surcharged with sorrow, cast their somber shade
Upon the sunny, joyous land below;
Others are floating through the dreamy air,
White as the falling snow, their margins tinged

With gold and crimson hues; their shadows fall
Upon the flowery meads and sunny slopes,
Soft as the shadow of an angel's wing.
When the rough battle of the day is done,
And evening's peace falls gently on the heart,

I bound away, across the noisy years,
Unto the utmost verge of Memory's land,
Where earth and sky in dreamy distance meet.
And Memory dim with dark oblivion joins;
Where woke the first remembered sounds that fell

Upon the ear in childhood's early morn;
And, wandering thence along the rolling years,
I see the shadow of my former self
Gliding from childhood up to man's estate.
The path of youth winds down through many a vale,

And on the brink of many a dread abyss,
From out whose darkness comes no ray of light,
Save that a phantom dances o'er the gulf
And beckons toward the verge; again the path
Leads o'er the summit where the sunbeams fall.

And thus in light and shade, sunshine and gloom,
Sorrow and joy this life-path leads along.