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From “The Pleasures of Memory”
ETHEREAL power! who at the noon of night | |
| Recall’st the far fled spirit of delight; | |
| From whom that musing, melancholy mood | |
| Which charms the wise, and elevates the good; | |
| Blest Memory, hail! O grant the grateful muse, | 5 |
| Her pencil dipped in nature’s living hues, | |
| To pass the clouds that round thy empire roll, | |
| And trace its airy precincts in the soul. | |
| Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, | |
| Our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain. | 10 |
| Awake but one, and lo, what myriads rise! | |
| Each stamps its image as the other flies! | |
| Each, as the various avenues of sense | |
| Delight or sorrow to the soul dispense, | |
| Brightens or fades; yet all, with magic art, | 15 |
| Control the latent fibres of the heart. | |
| As studious Prospero’s mysterious spell | |
| Drew every subject spirit to his cell, | |
| Each, at thy call, advances or retires, | |
| As judgment dictates, or the scene inspires. | 20 |
| Each thrills the seat of sense, that sacred source | |
| Whence the fine nerves direct their mazy course, | |
| And through the frame invisibly convey | |
| The subtle, quick vibrations as they play. | |
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| Hail, Memory, hail! in thy exhaustless mine | 25 |
| From age to age unnumbered treasures shine! | |
| Thought and her shadowy brood thy call obey, | |
| And place and time are subject to thy sway! | |
| Thy pleasures most we feel when most alone; | |
| The only pleasures we can call our own. | 30 |
| Lighter than air, hope’s summer visions die, | |
| If but a fleeting cloud obscure the sky; | |
| If but a beam of sober reason play, | |
| Lo, fancy’s fairy frost-work melts away! | |
| But can the wiles of art, the grasp of power, | 35 |
| Snatch the rich relics of a well spent hour? | |
| These, when the trembling spirit wings her flight | |
| Pour round her path a stream of living light; | |
| And gild those pure and perfect realms of rest, | |
| Where virtue triumphs, and her sons are blest! | 40 |
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