Poems (Brown)/Memory

by Carrie L. Brown

For works with similar titles, see Memory.

MEMORY. 

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Faded and worn are the pictures to-night
 Memory brings from her storehouse to me;
Weary and sad, tear-stained and bleared,
 From her dark castle over the sea.

As I bask in the glow of the moon to-night
 Pale phantoms group in the hall,
Some with countenance worn and sad,
 And I fancy my name they call.

O, give me the scenes of youthful days,
 I then was a gladsome child;
And stream, and hill, and wood, and dell
 Echoed to my laughter wild.

But now another scene doth rise,
 Dimmed with both pain and sorrow;
When Hope hath meekly folded her hands,
 And sighed for a brighter to-morrow.

Pale Memory brings her gifts to me
 From out of the gloomy past;
But sighing, I turn to the present again,
 And pray for her pleasures to last.

Sweet Memory comes with tear-stained eye,
 And parts my hair of brown,
Asks me to choose, in a voice so low,
 Between her and the future's frown.

I reach forth my hand to Memory;
 Sad though her treasures may be,
Yet sweeter by far is her voice so low,
 Than the voice of the future to me.

Still I sit and dream o'er the sad, sad scene
 Loved Memory brings to me,
With chastened heart and tear-dimmed eye,
 From her watch-tower over the sea.