Poems (Odom)/Across the Way
REMEMBRANCE.
Oh! give me the past with its clear golden light,Its beautiful dreamings that made it so bright;The stars that looked down from the azure and smiledSo brilliantly on me when I was a child.Before me now rolls the great sea of the past,Whose waves all about me its jewels have cast;And one that is dearest, and brightest, and best,I gather one moment to press to my breast.
I gaze on its brightness, and see in that gleamA face that once haunted love's earliest dream.The dream has long faded, the face passed away,The hopes that we cherished have gone to decay.Once madly I cast them away in my pride,And now fling their memory-gem in the tide.I stand at the tomb of those long-vanished years,Where the waves, lashing high, leave it studded with tears.
Each tear is a jewel that bears on its breastSome moment that has been or might have been blest;That "might have been," does it not call up a spell,O'er which we still linger and tenderly dwell?The clasping of hands that once lovingly met,Tho' forever estranged, we can never forget;That sweet thrill of happiness—joy without name,—That vanished as swiftly almost as it came;
That pure exhalation of heavenly bliss—The rapture of love's first bewildering kiss!These things come but once in the lifetime of men;When lost we can never recall them again.But though the hot tears to their memory flow,As we kneel at the grave of the dear long-ago,There still is one joy to the aching heart pressed,And we cling to the thought that we once have been blessed;
That down the dim aisles of the far-away pastSome moments, bright, blissful, if brief, have been cast;Though many bright stars in our heaven have set,They light up the sweet vale of memory yet; Like pearls in the breast of a dark heaving sea,They glow in the depths of a sad memory.Though life should be wrapped in a shroud of regret,Thank God for remembrance—we can never forget!