Poems on Memory

Is Memory most of miseries miserable,
Or the one flower of ease in bitterest hell?

by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

When Memory is full
Put on the perfect Lid -
This Morning's finest syllable
Presumptuous Evening said -

by Emily Dickinson.

And where is truth? On tombs? for such to thee
Has been my heart—and thy dead memory
Has lain from childhood, many a changeful year,
Unchangingly preserved and buried there.

by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

His namesake, born of Jewish breeder,
Knew 'from the Hyssop to the Cedar;'
But he, unlike the Jewish leader,
Scarce knew the Hyssop from the Cedar.


R. et R.

by Charles Lamb.

Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing;
What a little thing
To remember for years-
To remember with tears!

by William Allingham.

ONE had a lovely face,
And two or three had charm,
But charm and face were in vain
Because the mountain grass
Cannot but keep the form
Where the mountain hare has lain.

by William Butler Yeats.

To flee from memory
Had we the Wings
Many would fly
Inured to slower things
Birds with surprise
Would scan the cowering Van
Of men escaping
From the mind of man

by Emily Dickinson.

2nd Lieut., Cinque Ports Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment
Strong, loyal--souled, full--hearted, blithely brave,
Only remembering love knows all he gave:
Beautiful be the stars above his grave.

by Robert Laurence Binyon.

A Robin Redbreast in a cage,
Puts all Heaven in a rage.

A skylark wounded on the wing
Doth make a cherub cease to sing.

He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be beloved by men.

by William Blake.

Remembrance has a Rear and Front -
'Tis something like a House -
It has a Garret also
For Refuse and the Mouse.

Besides the deepest Cellar
That ever Mason laid -
Look to it by its Fathoms
Ourselves be not pursued -

by Emily Dickinson.

'Tis done! - I saw it in my dreams;
No more with Hope the future beams;
My days of happiness are few:
Chill'd by misfortune's wintry blast,
My dawn of life is overcast;
Love Hope, and Joy, alike adieu!
Would I could add Remembrance too!

by George Gordon Byron.

I recollect a nurse call'd Ann,
Who carried me about the grass,
And one fine day a fine young man
Came up, and kissed the pretty lass.
She did not make the least objection!
Thinks I, 'Aha!
When I can talk I'll tell Mamma'
- And that's my earliest recollection.

by Frederick Locker-Lampson.

O MEMORY, thou fond deceiver,
Still importunate and vain,
To former joys recurring ever,
And turning all the past to pain:

Thou, like the world, th' oppress'd oppressing,
Thy smiles increase the wretch's woe:
And he who wants each other blessing
In thee must ever find a foe.

by Oliver Goldsmith.

Remember thee! remember thee!
Till Lethe quench life's burning stream
Remorse and shame shall cling to thee,
And haunt thee like a feverish dream!

Remember thee! Aye, doubt it not.
Thy husband too shall think of thee:
By neither shalt thou be forgot,
Thou false to him, thou fiend to me!

by George Gordon Byron.

'Once they were lovers,' says the world, 'with young hearts all aglow;
They have forgotten,' says the world, 'forgotten long ago.'
Between ourselves-just whisper it-the old world does not know.

They walk their lone, divided ways, but ever with them goes
Remembrance, the subtle breath of love's sweet thorny rose.

by Jean Blewett.

After a hundred years
Nobody knows the place,--
Agony, that enacted there,
Motionless as peace.

Weeds triumphant ranged,
Strangers strolled and spelled
At the lone orthography
Of the elder dead.

Winds of summer fields
Recollect the way,--
Instinct picking up the key
Dropped by memory.

by Emily Dickinson.

THE days remember and the nights remember
The kingly hours that once you made so great,
Deep in my heart they lie, hidden in their splendor,
Buried like sovereigns in their robes of state.
Let them not wake again, better to lie there,
Wrapped in memories, jewelled and arrayed—
Many a ghostly king has waked from death-sleep
And found his crown stolen and his throne decayed.

by Sara Teasdale.

Remorse - is Memory - awake -
Her Parties all astir -
A Presence of Departed Acts -
At window - and at Door -

Its Past - set down before the Soul
And lighted with a Match -
Perusal - to facilitate -
And help Belief to stretch -

Remorse is cureless - the Disease
Not even God - can heal -
For 'tis His institution - and
The Adequate of Hell -

by Emily Dickinson.

Through rifts of cloud the moon’s soft silver slips;
A little rain has fallen with the night,
Which from the emerald under-sky still drips
Where the magnolias open, broad and white.

So near my window I might reach my hand
And touch these milky stars, that to and fro
Wave, odorous. . . .Yet ’t was in another land-
How long ago, my love, how long ago!

by Ina D. Coolbrith.

Strange Power, I know not what thou art,
Murderer or mistress of my heart.
I know I'd rather meet the blow
Of my most unrelenting foe
Than live---as now I live---to be
Slain twenty times a day by thee.

Yet, when I would command thee hence,
Thou mockest at the vain pretence,
Murmuring in mine ear a song
Once loved, alas! forgotten long;
And on my brow I feel a kiss
That I would rather die than miss.

by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge.

A YEAR is a thief
Who comes in the guise of a friend
Saying, 'Let us travel together,
We have much to give each other.
See, I hold back nothing--
For what is giving
Between friends?'

Yet when the year departs
He takes his gifts with him--
'Oh, Robber!' we cry,
Aghast and weeping,
'Nay,' he replies, 'I did but lend.
Still, for your weeping, I will leave you something.

It is not the real thing
But you may keep it always.'

by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay.

They mouth love's language. Gnash
The thirteen teeth
Your lean jaws grin with. Lash
Your itch and quailing, nude greed of the flesh.
Love's breath in you is stale, worded or sung,
As sour as cat's breath,
Harsh of tongue.

This grey that stares
Lies not, stark skin and bone.
Leave greasy lips their kissing. None
Will choose her what you see to mouth upon.
Dire hunger holds his hour.
Pluck forth your heart, saltblood, a fruit of tears.
Pluck and devour!

by James Joyce.

Rigid Body (sings).


Gin a body meet a body
Flyin’ through the air,
Gin a body hit a body,
Will it fly? and where?
Ilka impact has its measure,
Ne’er a ane hae I,
Yet a’ the lads they measure me,
Or, at least, they try.

Gin a body meet a body
Altogether free,
How they travel afterwards
We do not always see.
Ilka problem has its method
By analytics high;
For me, I ken na ane o’ them,
But what the waur am I?

by James Clerk Maxwell.

Sweet friend, farewell! to whom propitious birth
Gave beauty—sense—the prosperous goods of earth;
To whom not less were faith and duty given,
Those better gifts which fit our earth for heaven.
First by glad days—then through long sickness tried,
'Mid pleasures—pure—by pain still purified;—
Such was that soul, which meekly kissed the rod,
Then soared, for us too soon, and rests with God.
Farewell! our love inscribes this faithful stone,
Not to bewail thy lot, but weep our own.

by John Kenyon.

902

The first Day that I was a Life
I recollect it—How still—
That last Day that I was a Life
I recollect it—as well—

'Twas stiller—though the first
Was still—
"Twas empty—but the first
Was full—

This—was my finallest Occasion—
But then
My tenderer Experiment
Toward Men—

"Which choose I"?
That—I cannot say—
"Which choose They"?
Question Memory!

by Emily Dickinson.

Full oft it was as balmy night
Wove many a web of dreamy light,
The moon so touched her budding charms,
I feared for my enfolding arms,
That held her close.

And so, on one forbidding night,
That knew no moon's caressing light,
All withered lay her blossomed charms
In envious death's relentless arms,
That held her close.

But oft again in memory's night
The moon refloods the scene with light,
And lovelier still, her wakened charms
Rejoice my fond, enfolding arms,
That hold her close.

by Edward Robeson Taylor.

Memory, hither come,
And tune your merry notes;
And, while upon the wind
Your music floats,

I'll pore upon the stream
Where sighing lovers dream,
And fish for fancies as they pass
Within the watery glass.

I'll drink of the clear stream,
And hear the linnet's song;
And there I'll lie and dream
The day along:

And, when night comes, I'll go
To places fit for woe,
Walking along the darken'd valley
With silent Melancholy.

by William Blake.

Along the shore the tall thin grass,
That fringes that dark river,
While sinuously soft feet pass
Beings to bleed and quiver.

The great dark voice breaks with a sob
Across the womb of night;
Above your grave, the tom-toms throb
And the hills are weird with light.

The great dark beast is like a well
Drained bitter by the sky,
And all the honeyed lies they tell
Come there to thirst and die.

No lie is strong enough to kill
The roots that work below,
From your rich dust and slaughtered will
A tree with tongues shall grow.

by Countee Cullen.

O THOUGHT, fly to her when the end of day
Awakens an old memory, and say,
'Your strength, that is so lofty and fierce and kind,
It might call up a new age, calling to mind
The queens that were imagined long ago,
Is but half yours: he kneaded in the dough
Through the long years of youth, and who would have thought
It all, and more than it all, would come to naught,
And that dear words meant nothing?' But enough,
For when we have blamed the wind we can blame love;
Or, if there needs be more, be nothing said
That would be harsh for children that have strayed.

by William Butler Yeats.

I wish I could remember the first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me;
If bright or dim the season, it might be
Summer or winter for aught I can say.
So unrecorded did it slip away,
So blind was I to see and to foresee,
So dull to mark the budding of my tree
That would not blossom yet for many a May.
If only I could recollect it! Such
A day of days! I let it come and go
As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow.
It seemed to mean so little, meant so much!
If only now I could recall that touch,
First touch of hand in hand! - Did one but know!

by Christina Georgina Rossetti.

Oft I remember those I have known
In other days, to whom my heart was lead
As by a magnet, and who are not dead,
But absent, and their memories overgrown
With other thoughts and troubles of my own,
As graves with grasses are, and at their head
The stone with moss and lichens so o'er spread,
Nothing is legible but the name alone.
And is it so with them? After long years.
Do they remember me in the same way,
And is the memory pleasant as to me?
I fear to ask; yet wherefore are my fears?
Pleasures, like flowers, may wither and decay,
And yet the root perennial may be.

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Oft I remember those I have known
In other days, to whom my heart was lead
As by a magnet, and who are not dead,
But absent, and their memories overgrown
With other thoughts and troubles of my own,
As graves with grasses are, and at their head
The stone with moss and lichens so o'er spread,
Nothing is legible but the name alone.
And is it so with them? After long years.
Do they remember me in the same way,
And is the memory pleasant as to me?
I fear to ask; yet wherefore are my fears?
Pleasures, like flowers, may wither and decay,
And yet the root perennial may be.

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

WHEN I have borne in memory what has tamed
Great Nations, how ennobling thoughts depart
When men change swords for ledgers, and desert
The student's bower for gold, some fears unnamed
I had, my Country!--am I to be blamed?
Now, when I think of thee, and what thou art,
Verily, in the bottom of my heart,
Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed.
For dearly must we prize thee; we who find
In thee a bulwark for the cause of men:
And I by my affection was beguiled:
What wonder if a Poet now and then,
Among the many movements of his mind,
Felt for thee as a lover or a child!

by William Wordsworth.

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full charactered with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain
Beyond all date even to eternity—
Or at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be missed.
That poor retention could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
To trust those tables that receive thee more.
To keep an adjunct to remember thee
Were to import forgetfulness in me.

by William Shakespeare.

If poisonous minerals, and if that tree
Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,
If lecherous goats, if serpents envious
Cannot be damned, alas, why should I be?
Why should intent or reason, born in me,
Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous?
And Mercy being easy, and glorious
To God; in his stern wrath, why threatens he?
But who am I, that dare dispute with thee
O God? Oh! of thine only worthy blood,
And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood,
And drown in it my sin's black memory;
That thou remember them, some claim as debt,
I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget.

by John Donne.

Soon the waves so lightly bounding
All forget the tempest blast;
Soon the pines so sadly sounding
Cease to mourn the storm that's past.

Soon is hushed the voice of gladness
Heard within the green wood's breast;
Yet come back no notes of sadness,
No remembrance breaks its rest.

But the heart,—how fond t'will treasure
Every note of grief and joy!
Oft come back the notes of pleasure,
Grief's sad echoes oft annoy.

There still dwell the looks that vanish
Swift as brightness of a dream;
Time in vain earth's smiles may banish,
There undying still they beam.

by Jones Very.

CALVERT! it must not be unheard by them
Who may respect my name, that I to thee
Owed many years of early liberty.
This care was thine when sickness did condemn
Thy youth to hopeless wasting, root and stem--
That I, if frugal and severe, might stray
Where'er I liked; and finally array
My temples with the Muse's diadem.
Hence, if in freedom I have loved the truth;
If there be aught of pure, or good, or great,
In my past verse; or shall be, in the lays
Of higher mood, which now I meditate;--
It gladdens me, O worthy, short-lived, Youth!
To think how much of this will be thy praise.

by William Wordsworth.

Where silent elms are clustering round
That grey church-tower, which peers above,
She sleeps beneath the narrow mound,
Whom I had loved with brother's love.
The sun, o'er yonder wooded height
Slow-drawing on his evening streak,
Had glanced a ray of rosy light
Athwart her pale and dying cheek;
And while that glorious orb of his
Yet hung—departing—in the west,
Amid a kindred scene like this
Her noble spirit sank to rest.
But, ever since, this westering light,
These purpled hills, that flaming sea,
Those streaks o'er yonder wooded height,
Though beauteous still, are sad to me.

by John Kenyon.

In alien earth, across a troubled sea,
His body lies that was so fair and young.
His mouth is stopped, with half his songs unsung;
His arm is still, that struck to make men free.
But let no cloud of lamentation be
Where, on a warrior's grave, a lyre is hung.
We keep the echoes of his golden tongue,
We keep the vision of his chivalry.
So Israel's joy, the loveliest of kings,
Smote now his harp, and now the hostile horde.
To-day the starry roof of Heaven rings
With psalms a soldier made to praise his Lord;
And David rests beneath Eternal wings,
Song on his lips, and in his hand a sword.

by Joyce Kilmer.

What tho' no sculptur'd monument proclaim
Thy fate-yet Albert in my breast I bear
Inshrin'd the sad remembrance; yet thy name
Will fill my throbbing bosom. When DESPAIR
The child of murdered HOPE, fed on thy heart,
Loved honored friend, I saw thee sink forlorn
Pierced to the soul by cold Neglect's keen dart,
And Penury's hard ills, and pitying Scorn,
And the dark spectre of departed JOY
Inhuman MEMORY. Often on thy grave
Love I the solitary hour to employ
Thinking on other days; and heave the sigh
Responsive, when I mark the high grass wave
Sad sounding as the cold breeze rustles by.

by Robert Southey.