Classic and Contemporary Poetry
AN EMBER PICTURE, by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: How strange are the freaks of memory Last Line: For is it not all a dream? Subject(s): Friendship; Memory | ||||||||
HOW strange are the freaks of memory! The lessons of life we forget, While a trifle, a trick of color, In the wonderful web is set, -- Set by some mordant of fancy, And, spite of the wear and tear Of time or distance or trouble, Insists on its right to be there. A chance had brought us together; Our talk was of matters-of-course; We were nothing, one to the other, But a short half-hour's resource. We spoke of French acting and actors, And their easy, natural way: Of the weather, for it was raining As we drove home from the play. We debated the social nothings We bore ourselves so to discuss; The thunderous rumors of battle Were silent the while for us. Arrived at her door, we left her With a drippingly hurried adieu, And our wheels went crunching the gravel Of the oak-darkened avenue. As we drove away through the shadow, The candle she held in the door From rain-varnished tree-trunk to tree-trunk Flashed fainter, and flashed no more; -- Flashed fainter, then wholly faded Before we had passed the wood; But the light of the face behind it Went with me and stayed for good. The vision of scarce a moment, And hardly marked at the time, It comes unbidden to haunt me, Like a scrap of ballad-rhyme. Had she beauty? Well, not what they call so; You may find a thousand as fair; And yet there's her face in my memory With no special claim to be there. As I sit sometimes in the twilight, And call back to life in the coals Old faces and hopes and fancies Long buried, (good rest to their souls!) Her face shines out in the embers; I see her holding the light, And hear the crunch of the gravel And the sweep of the rain that night. 'T is a face that can never grow older, That never can part with its gleam, 'T is a gracious possession forever, For is it not all a dream? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MEMORY AS A HEARING AID by TONY HOAGLAND THE SAME QUESTION by JOHN HOLLANDER FORGET HOW TO REMEMBER HOW TO FORGET by JOHN HOLLANDER ON THAT SIDE by LAWRENCE JOSEPH MEMORY OF A PORCH by DONALD JUSTICE BEYOND THE HUNTING WOODS by DONALD JUSTICE AFTER THE BURIAL by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL |
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