Poem by Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton

Recollections

DO you remember all the sunny places,
Where in bright days, long past, we played together?
Do you remember all the old home faces
That gathered round the hearth in wintry weather?
Do you remember all the happy meetings,
In Summer evenings round the open door--
Kind looks, kind hearts, kind words and tender greetings,
And clasping hands whose pulses beat no more?
                Do you remember them?

Do you remember all the merry laughter;
The voices round the swing in our old garden:
The dog that, when we ran, still followed after;
The teasing frolic sure of speedy pardon:

We were but children then, young happy creatures,
And hardly knew how much we had to lose--
But now the dreamlike memory of those features
Comes back, and bids my darkened spirit muse.
                Do you remember them?

Do you remember when we first departed
From all the old companions who were round us,
How very soon again we grew light-hearted,
And talked with smiles of all the links which bound us?
And after, when our footsteps were returning,
With unfelt weariness, o'er hill and plain;
How our young hearts kept boiling up, and burning,
To think how soon we'd be at home again.
                Do you remember this?

Do you remember how the dreams of glory
Kept fading from us like a fairy treasure;
How we thought less of being fam'd in story,
And more of those to whom our fame gave pleasure.
Do you remember in far countries, weeping,
When a light breeze, a flower, hath brought to mind
Old happy thoughts, which till that hour were sleeping,
And made us yearn for those we left behind?
                Do you remember this?

Do you remember when no sound 'woke gladly,
But desolate echoes through our home were ringing,
How for a while we talked--then paused full sadly,
Because our voices bitter thoughts were bringing?
Ah me! those days--those days! my friend, my brother,
Sit down and let us talk of all our woe,
For we have nothing left but one another;
Yet where they went, old playmate, we shall go--
                Let us remember this.

1. The Sense of Beauty
2. Weep Not for Him That Dieth
3. The Chapel Royal St. James’s, on the 10th February, 1840
4. The Boatswain’s Song
5. The Fever-Dream

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