Poems of Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in The Keepsake, 1832/Do You Remember It?
DO YOU REMEMBER IT.
|
DO YOU REMEMBER IT?
BY L. E. L.
I.
Do you remember that purple twilight's falling,
As if it were the atmosphere of some fairy land?
One pale star to its lingering kindred calling,
Was alone in the sky of all night's spirit band.
To and fro, mournfully the oak boughs were swinging,
For a soft warm wind put the branches aside;
Afar a little river wound through the meadow, singing
To the tall grass and wild flowers hanging o'er its tide.
Down at our feet the blue violets were growing,
We saw not their blossoms, but we felt that they were fair,
For the fresh and fragrant rain of young April's bestowing,
Fell from their leaves as they opened to the air.
Deep fell the shadows round, each could see only
The dark outline softening of the other's face;
Thick closed the trees above, earth held no such lonely,
Nor, as we then deem'd, so lovely a place.
Sweet was the silence, but sweeter was it broken
By words such as Love whispers once in his youth,
When leaf, star, and night, are each taken for a token,
And a witness, though we doubted not, of such stainless truth;
Hope with its fever, and memory with its sorrow,
Came not o'er a moment, whose joy stood alone:
There are some days which never know a morrow,
And the day when Love first finds utterance is one—
Do you remember it?
II.
Still the blue violets by the oak are shaded,
Time in that quiet grove has left no trace;
But as the colours of this picture are faded,
So are the colours the heart threw o'er the place.
Passion and picture were each a fair delusion,
Tears have washed the brightness of each away;
Why should we wake from such beautiful illusion,
To know that life's happiness was lavish'd on a day?
And yet we are not false mid absence and mid strangers;
Mid trial and mid time, how dearly we've loved on;
Faithful through all that the faith of love endangers,
Though we feel that the dream of our earlier love is gone.
We have heard the heart's religion, its holy truth derided,
And the sneer, if not admitted has yet profaned;
By the world's many busy cares our thoughts have been divided,
And selfishness has harden'd whatever ground it gain'd.
When I think how that affection is bless'd beyond all measure,
The last best trace of heaven our earth retains,
I marvel how ambition, or vanity, or pleasure,
E'er have power to relax, or to break its gentle chains.
My spirit ponders mournfully, my eyes are dim with weeping,
Aside for a moment all life's worldliness is cast;
The flowers and the green leaves their summer watch are keeping,
And I dream beneath their shadow of the shadow of the past.
Do you remember it?