Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, GREATER MEMORY, by ARTHUR WILLIAM EDGAR O'SHAUGHNESSY


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GREATER MEMORY, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: In the heart there lay buried for years
Last Line: That heart and that memory dwell.
Alternate Author Name(s): O'shaughnessy, Arthur W. E.
Subject(s): Love - Loss Of; Memory; Past; Reunions


IN the heart there lay buried for years
Love's story of passion and tears;
Of the heaven that two had begun,
And the horror that tore them apart,
When one was love's slayer, but one
Made a grave for the love in his heart.

The long years passed weary and lone,
And it lay there and changed there unknown;
Then one day from its innermost place,
In the shamed and the ruined love's stead,
Love arose with a glorified face,
Like an angel that comes from the dead.

It uplifted the stone that was set
On that tomb which the heart held yet;
But the sorrow had mouldered within,
And there came from the long closed door
A clear image, that was not the sin
Or the grief that lay buried before.

The grief it was long washed away
In the weeping of many a day;
And the terrible past lay afar,
Like a dream left behind in the night;
And the memory that woke was a star
Shining pure in the soul's pure light.

There was never the stain of a tear
On the face that was ever so dear;
'Twas the same in each lovelier way;
'Twas the old love's holier part,
And the dream of the earliest day
Brought back to the desolate heart.

It was knowledge of all that had been
In the thought, in the soul unseen;
'Twas the word which the lips could not say
To redeem and recover the past;
It was more than was taken away
Which the heart got back at the last.

The passion that lost its spell,
The rose that died where it fell,
The look that was looked in vain,
The prayer that seemed lost evermore,
They were found in the heart again,
With all that the heart would restore.

And thenceforward the heart was a shrine
For that memory to dwell in divine,
Till from life, as from love, the dull leaven
Of grief-stained earthliness fell;
And thenceforth in the infinite heaven
That heart and that memory dwell.





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