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Literary Gazette, 25th January, 1834, Page 63
ORIGINAL POETRY.
MEMORY.
It is fading around me, that shadowy splendour
That haunts the red twilight, the vague and the vain;
Those warm clouds their fugitive blush must surrender,
And colourless melt in the dim air again.
They will leave no remembrance to tell of the glory
Dissolving at sunset away in the west;
They are gone, and the page of the air has no story,
Recalling the beauty with which it was blest.
And thus with our memory—too light are its traces
Of joy or of sorrow experienced of yore;
The shadow of life each soft colour effaces,
And the past has one sorrowing echo—no more!
Ah! childhood was lovely; but what of its hours,
The bright and the buoyant, what relics have they?
I cannot repaint the green leaves, the glad flowers,
That once made the beauty of earth and of day.
I well can recall the old lime-trees hung o'er me,
The bees and the pale blossoms thick o'er each bough;
But the dreams of my future, that brightened before me,
What were they? I cannot remember them now.
