Of Memory. From Proverbial Philosophy

Where art thou, storehouse of the mind, gamer of facts and fancies, —
In what strange firmament are laid the beams of thine airy chambers?
Or art thou that small cavern, the centre of the rolling brain,
Where still one sandy morsel testifieth man's original?
Or hast thou some grand globe, some common hall of intellect,
Some spacious market-place for thought, where all do bring their wares.
And gladly rescued from the littleness, the narrow closet of a self,
The privileged soul hath large access, coming in the livery of learning?
Live we as isolated worlds, perfect in substance and spirit,
Each a sphere, with a special mind, prisoned in its shell of matter?
Or rather, as converging radiations, parts of one majestic whole.
Beams of the Sun, streams from the River, branches of the mighty Tree,
Some bearing fruit, some bearing leaves, and some diseased and barren, —
Some for the feast, some for the floor, and some, — how many, — for the fire?
Memory may be but a power of coming to the treasury of Fact,
A momentary self-desertion, an absence in spirit from the now.
An actual coursing hither and thither, by the mind, slipped from its leash,
A life, as in the mystery of dreams, spent within the limits of a moment.

A brutish man knoweth not this, neither can a fool comprehend it,
But there be secrets of the memory, deep, wondrous, and fearful.
Were I at Petra, could I not declare, My soul hath been here before me?
Am I strange to the columned halls, the calm dead grandeur of Palmyra?
Know I not thy mount, Cannel! Have I not voyaged on the Danube,
Nor seen the glare of Arctic snows, — nor the black tents of the Tartar?
Is it then a dream, that I remember the faces of them of old,
While wandering in the grove with Plato, and listening to Zeno in the porch?
Paul have I seen, and Pythagoras, and the Stagyrite hath spoken me friendly.
And His meek eye looked also upon me, standing with Peter in the palace.
Athens and Rome, Persepolis and Sparta, am I not a freeman of you all?
And chiefly can my yearning heart forget thee, O Jerusalem? —
For the strong magic of conception, mingled with the fumes of memoiy,
Giveth me a life in all past time, yea, and addeth substance to the future.
Be ye my judges, imaginative minds, full-fledged to soar into the sun.
Whose grosser natural thoughts the chemistry of wisdom hath sublimed,
Have ye not confessed to a feeling, a consciousness strange and vague.
That ye have gone this way before, and walk again your daily life,
Tracking an old routine, and on some foreign strand,
Where bodily ye have never stood, finding your own footsteps?
Hath not at times some recent friend looked out an old familiar,
Some newest circumstance or place teemed as with ancient memories?
A startling sudden flash lighteth up all for an instant.
And then it is quenched, as in darkness, and leaveth the cold spirit trembling.

Memory is not wisdom; idiots can rote volumes:
Yet what is wisdom without memory? a babe that is strangled in its birth,
The path of the swallow in the air, the path of the dolphan in the waters,
A cask running out, a bottomless chasm: such is wisdom without memory.
There be many wise, who cannot store their knowledge;
Yet from themselves are they satisfied, for the fountain is within:
There be many who store, but have no wisdom of their own,
Lumbering their armoury with weapons their muscles cannot lift:
There be many thieves and robbers, who glean and store unlawfully.
Calling in to memory's help some cunningly devised Cabala:
But to feed the mind with fatness, to fill thy granary with corn.
Nor clog with chaff and straw the threshing-floor of reason,


Reap the ideas, and house them well; but leave the words high stubble:
Strive to store up what was thought, despising what was said.
For the mind is a spirit, and drinketh in ideas, as flame melteth into flame;
But for words it must pack them as on floors, cumbrous and perishable merchandize.

To be pained for a minute, to fear for an hour, to hope for a week, — how long and weary '
But to remember fourscore years, is to look back upon a day.
An avenue seemeth to lengthen in the eyes of the way-faring man.
But let him turn, those stationed elms crowd up within a yard;
Pace the lamp-lit streets of some sleeping city.
The multitude of cressets shall seem one, in the false picture of perspective;
Even so, in sweet treachery, dealeth the aged with himself,
He gazeth on the green hill-tops, while the marshes beneath are hidden;
And the partial telescope of memory pierceth the blank between,
To look with lingering love at the fan star of childhood.
Life is as the current spark on the miner's wheel of flints ,
Whiles it spinneth there is light; stop it, all is darkness:
Life is as a morsel of frankincense burning in the hall of Eternity;
It is gone, but its odorous cloud curleth to the lofty roof:
Life is as a lump of salt, melting in the temple-layer;
It is gone, — yet its savour reacheth to the farthest atom:
Even so, for evil or for good, is life the criterion of a man,
For its memories of sanctity or sin pervade all the firmament of being.
There is but the flitting moment, wherein to hope or to enjoy,
But in the calendar of memory, that moment is all time.


Transcribed from Proverbial Philosophy by Mick Puttock, August 2011 (Spelling, punctuation and grammer left mostly unchanged from the 25th edition)