Page:Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, 1846).djvu/95

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MEMORY.
85

Smile on the little daisy still,
The buttercup's bright goblet fill
With all thy former power.


For ever hang thy dreamy spell
Round mountain star and heather bell,
And do not pass away
From sparkling frost, or wreathed snow,
And whisper when the wild winds blow,
Or rippling waters play.


Is childhood, then, so all divine?
Or Memory, is the glory thine,
That haloes thus the past?
Not all divine; its pangs of grief,
(Although, perchance, their stay be brief,)
Are bitter while they last.


Nor is the glory all thine own,
For on our earliest joys alone
That holy light is cast.
With such a ray, no spell of thine
Can make our later pleasures shine,
Though long ago they passed.

Acton.