MEMORY'S MANSION

In Memory's Mansion are wonderful rooms,

And I wander about them at will;

And I pause at the casements, where boxes of blooms

Are sending sweet scents o'er the sill.

I lean from a window that looks on a lawn:

From a turret that looks on the wave.

But I draw down the shade, when I see on some glade,

A stone standing guard, by a grave.

To Memory's attic I clambered one day,

When the roof was resounding with rain.

And there, among relics long hidden away,

I rummaged with heart-ache and pain.

A hope long surrendered and covered with dust,

A pastime, out-grown, and forgot,

And a fragment of love, all corroded with rust,

Were lying heaped up in one spot.

And there on the floor of that garret was tossed

A friendship too fragile to last,

With pieces of dearly bought pleasures, that cost

Vast fortunes of pain in the past.

A fabric of passion, once ardent and bright,

As tropical sunsets in spring,

Was spread out before me — a terrible sight -

A moth-eaten rag of a thing.

Then down the steep stairway I hurriedly went,

And into fair chambers below.

But the mansion seemed filled with the old attic scent,

Wherever my footsteps would go.

Though in Memory's House I still wander full oft,

No more to the garret I climb;

And I leave all the rubbish heaped there in the loft

To the hands of the Housekeeper, Time.