Poems (Hoffman)/Remembrance
For works with similar titles, see Remembrance.
REMEMBRANCE.
Sometimes, I think, we never do forget;The friendly face, the word, the smile, the tear,May slumber undisturbed for many a year;The chariot wheels of Memory revolveAnd lo, before us looms the thing we deemedForgotten, though of which we one day dreamedAnd had but slumbered when we thought it dead.
These things can never die, though lethargyMay wrap them in its solitude profound;Yet they are not extinct, but wrapped aroundWith the dark chrysalis—unconsciousness;Till, unexpectedly, the mystic spellIs broken,—Memory's living beams dispelThe sweet forgetfulness that veiled the past.
We lay the past away as on a shelfDeep in the hidden labyrinth of the mind,And there are volumes that we fail to find;As oft a misplaced book is counted lostWhen only screened from sight in some recess,Each thought leaves on the mind its own impress,And though but faintly, not to be erased.
O sweet Forgetfulness thou art but brief,—A trance that sways the senses for an hourAs morning dewdrops glitter on a flower! What would not millions give to have thee stayTo cover up the memories Time recordsAs with a burning pen in loving wordsThat e'en though stifled wake to life again!
In thoughtless circles, mingling with the dance,In haunts of drunkenness and revelry,We find them striving to drown Memory;Amid the fascination of the hourEach his own phantom for a while pursues,Hoping himself in some charmed spell to loseOr find the fountain of oblivion.