OLD MEMORIES.
Reading edition
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BY MRS. C. H. W. ESLING.
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How swiftly do old memories float about our riper hours!
They’re like the fragrant breath that fills the vase of perish’d flowers;
They bear an unextinguish’d ray, a light that never dies,
A borrow’d radiance gilding earth with lustre from the skies.
The joys that gather round us now, with all their rainbow beams,
Are bright, but evanescent, as the shadows in our dreams;
They pass before us like the leaves swept by the autumn’s blast,
Alas! too fragile for the earth—too beautiful to last.
We see the human flowers cut down, the kindred ones of home,
Whose garden was the loving heart, where storm clouds seldom come,
Making within that temple fair, a wilderness of woes,
A desert drear of that which once could “blossom as the Rose.”
We see the clasping chains unloose, and sever link by link,
Till hope turns shudderingly away, from sorrow’s fearful brink,
The band of sweet relationship, of close unwoven ties,
Is broken here—to reunite forever in the skies.
But memory with her guardian care, hath linger’d o’er each scene,
To paint them on the heart again when long years intervene.
When life’s bright summer days have gone, and all their beauty fled,
It brings us back the halcyon hours, that perish’d with the dead.
Oh! soft as music’s dying fall, from some loved voice’s tone,
Thine influence, mild and gentle power, across my mind is thrown;
Upon the harp strings of my heart, thine angel spirits play,
While fond old memories light its gloom, with many a moonlit ray.