University of Virginia Library

REMEMBRANCES.

Remembrances! coiled ivies of the heart,
That grasp and crush it, till its life-drops start,—
Your gordianed coils, your ravelled tendrils loose;
Unwind from my sad thoughts those chain-links close;
Let me, oh! breathe glad currents of fresh air—
Drink draughts of pure sweet waters—free from care—
Welling from the unborn years; let me not droop
For evermore beneath a blighted hope;
My heart was free as a wild bird's of yore—
Must it be seared and haunted evermore?
Hope's precious rains have brought but poisonous plants,
Doubts, terrors, memories—till my sick soul pants
Even as a hunted deer—and dies away
In passionate yearnings for some calmer day,
When Memory may her arrowy sceptre break,
And from the soul her burdening mantle shake;
When the out-stretched Future, like a breezeless sea,
Shall shine in undisturbed transparency,
Troubled by no far-lengthening shadows, cast
From the horizon of the westering past.
Remembrances, dark ivies of the heart,
Your thorn-like tendrils through my soul ye dart;
All greenly branching round the ruins old
Of time, by ye o'ergloomed a thousand-fold!
O, but release me—let me win repose,
Or be the victim but of present woes!
Now, when, with morning beautifully red,
Glows every hill and valley far outspread—
While wakening birds flit 'mongst the dancing leaves—
Singing beneath the o'ershadowing household eaves!
Ye, ye, with breeze-like voices swell the strain,
Refining each emotion into pain!
Till morning, with her scents, and blooms, and lights,
Is haunted as lone hours of deepest nights.
Those breeze-like voices, too, are ever heard
When greets the ear the softly-warbled word;
That warbled word sung by some gentle voice
That once could wake the spirit to rejoice.
O that those voices could be drowned or stilled,
Or the racked sense with but their tones be filled!
But now—to walk 'mongst shadowy parted hours,
Dreamy existences, mysterious powers,
And yet be girt by all the bonds of life,—
Bowed by its actual grief and present strife—
This is a master-agony—'tis mine!
Oh, must it be—till lulled on shores divine?—
Remembrances—dark ivies of the heart—
Crush it, constrictor-like, at once, or part!