Poems (Hoffman)/Remembrance

by Martha Lavinia Hoffman

For works with similar titles, see Remembrance.

REMEMBRANCE.

Sometimes, I think, we never do forget;
The friendly face, the word, the smile, the tear,
May slumber undisturbed for many a year;
The chariot wheels of Memory revolve
And lo, before us looms the thing we deemed
Forgotten, though of which we one day dreamed
And had but slumbered when we thought it dead.

These things can never die, though lethargy
May wrap them in its solitude profound;
Yet they are not extinct, but wrapped around
With the dark chrysalis—unconsciousness;
Till, unexpectedly, the mystic spell
Is broken,—Memory's living beams dispel
The sweet forgetfulness that veiled the past.

We lay the past away as on a shelf
Deep in the hidden labyrinth of the mind,
And there are volumes that we fail to find;
As oft a misplaced book is counted lost
When only screened from sight in some recess,
Each thought leaves on the mind its own impress,
And though but faintly, not to be erased.

O sweet Forgetfulness thou art but brief,—
A trance that sways the senses for an hour
As morning dewdrops glitter on a flower!
What would not millions give to have thee stay
To cover up the memories Time records
As with a burning pen in loving words
That e'en though stifled wake to life again!

In thoughtless circles, mingling with the dance,
In haunts of drunkenness and revelry,
We find them striving to drown Memory;
Amid the fascination of the hour
Each his own phantom for a while pursues,
Hoping himself in some charmed spell to lose
Or find the fountain of oblivion.