Memory

The mother of the Muses, we are taught,
Is Memory: she has left me; they remain,
And shake my shoulder, urging me to sing
About the summer days, my loves of old.
Alas! alas! is all I can reply.
Memory has left with me that name alone,
Harmonious name, which other bards may sing,
But her bright image in my darkest hour
Comes back, in vain comes back, calld or uncalld.
Forgotten are the names of visitors
Ready to press my hand but yesterday;
Forgotten are the names of earlier friends
Whose genial converse and glad countenance
Are fresh as ever to mine ear and eye;
To these, when I have written and besought
Remembrance of me, the word Dear alone
Hangs on the upper verge, and waits in vain.
A blessing wert thou, O oblivion,
If thy stream carried only weeds away,
But vernal and autumnal flowers alike
It hurries down to wither on the strand.

Walter Savage Landor

Walter Savage Landor was an English writer, poet, and dramatist. He is best known for his prose work, the 'Imaginary Conversations,' but also wrote numerous poems and plays. Landor had a tempestuous character and often found himself in conflict with authorities and contemporaries. Despite his combative nature, he was highly regarded by other literary figures such as Charles Dickens and Robert Browning. His works reflect his classical education and strong individualism.

Walter Savage Landor

Tell me not things past all belief;

Walter Savage Landor, Simple Poetry

On His Seventy-Fifth Birthday

Walter Savage Landor, Simple Poetry

Quotations I

Walter Savage Landor, Simple Poetry

Persistence

Walter Savage Landor, Simple Poetry

English

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Memoria In Æterna.

Sweet Memory! thou faculty divine--
Triumphant o'er the cruel hand of Time!
On thy tablets we may trace
The lines his fingers ne'er efface,
And take with us till latest day
The images that light our way,
And picture thus in a shadowy form
The loved and lost he's from us torn--
Their lids by Death so early sealed--
Life's crimson tide by him congealed--
The tyrant has not all concealed--
They in thy mirror still revealed!

Before the morning sunbeams kissed
The face of Nature--veiled in mist--
And heralded with golden ray
The opening of the perfect day--
Ere yet the sable shades of night
At dawn's approach had winged their flight--
We've listed to the whispering breeze
That's wafted o'er the trembling trees,
And seemed to hear the voice...

George W. Doneghy

To Wordsworth

Those who have laid the harp aside
And turn'd to idler things,
From very restlessness have tried
The loose and dusty strings.
And, catching back some favourite strain,
Run with it o'er the chords again.

But Memory is not a Muse,
O Wordsworth! though 'tis said
They all descend from her, and use
To haunt her fountain-head:
That other men should work for me
In the rich mines of Poesie,
Pleases me better than the toil
Of smoothing under hardened hand,
With Attic emery and oil,
The shining point for Wisdom's wand,
Like those thou temperest 'mid the rills
Descending from thy native hills.

Without his governance, in vain
Manhood is strong, and Youth is bold
If oftentimes the o'er-piled strain
Clogs in the furnace, and grows cold

Walter Savage Landor

Memories

Oft I remember those whom I have known
    In other days, to whom my heart was led
    As by a magnet, and who are not dead,
    But absent, and their memories overgrown
With other thoughts and troubles of my own,
    As graves with grasses are, and at their head
    The stone with moss and lichens so o'erspread,
    Nothing is legible but the name alone.
And is it so with them?    After long years,
    Do they remember me in the same way,
    And is the memory pleasant as to me?
I fear to ask; yet wherefore are my fears?
    Pleasures, like flowers, may wither and decay,
    And yet the root perennial may be.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Ode To Memory

I.

Thou who stealest fire,
From the fountains of the past,
To glorify the present, O, haste,
Visit my low desire!
Strengthen me, enlighten me!
I faint in this obscurity,
Thou dewy dawn of memory.


II.

Come not as thou camest of late,
Flinging the gloom of yesternight
On the white day, but robed in softend light
Of orient state.
Whilome thou camest with the morning mist,
Even as a maid, whose stately brow
The dew-impearled winds of dawn have kissd,
When she, as thou,
Stays on her floating locks the lovely freight
Of overflowing blooms, and earliest shoots
Of orient green, giving safe pledge of fruits,
Which in wintertide shall star
The black earth with brilliance rare.


III.

Whilome th...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Memory

Brightly the sun of summer shone,
Green fields and waving woods upon,
And soft winds wandered by;
Above, a sky of purest blue,
Around, bright flowers of loveliest hue,
Allured the gazer's eye.

But what were all these charms to me,
When one sweet breath of memory
Came gently wafting by?
I closed my eyes against the day,
And called my willing soul away,
From earth, and air, and sky;

That I might simply fancy there
One little flower, a primrose fair,
Just opening into sight;
As in the days of infancy,
An opening primrose seemed to me
A source of strange delight.

Sweet Memory! ever smile on me;
Nature's chief beauties spring from thee,
Oh, still thy tribute bring!
Still make the golden crocus shine
Among the flowers ...

Anne Bronte

Memorials Of A Tour On The Continent, 1820 - XXXII. - Elegiac Stanzas

Lulled by the sound of pastoral bells,
Rude Nature's Pilgrims did we go,
From the dread summit of the Queen
Of mountains, through a deep ravine,
Where, in her holy chapel, dwells
"Our Lady of the Snow."

The sky was blue, the air was mild;
Free were the streams and green the bowers;
As if, to rough assaults unknown,
The genial spot had 'ever' shown
A countenance that as sweetly smiled
The face of summer-hours.

And we were gay, our hearts at ease;
With pleasure dancing through the frame
We journeyed; all we knew of care
Our path that straggled here and there;
Of trouble, but the fluttering breeze;
Of Winter, but a name.

If foresight could have rent the veil
Of three short days, but hush, no more!
Calm is the grave, and calme...

William Wordsworth