Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ON LEAVING A PLACE WHERE ONE HAD DWELT MANY YEARS, by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ON LEAVING A PLACE WHERE ONE HAD DWELT MANY YEARS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: There are some moments in each life
Last Line: Of aught can never be the last.
Alternate Author Name(s): Houghton, 1st Baron; Houghton, Lord
Subject(s): Change; Home; Moving & Movers


THERE are some moments in each life
With strange and wayward feelings rife,
When certain words and certain things
Strike on the heart unwonted strings,
And waken forth some solemn tone
Their nature yet has never known:
And it is thus -- when from some place,
As from a long familiar face,
Though you may wish the chain to sever,
Still are you sad to part for ever.

Perchance 'twas an unlovely spot,
Perchance too that you loved it not, --
Perchance that in that place had been
Dramas of many a cloudy scene, --
That there the first fresh tear was wept,
Or youth's impatient vigil kept,
That not a day you there had spent
Held its unchequered merriment
Marked by the free heart's earliest throes,
And chronicled by childhood's woes, --
Though soulless men may wonder why
You heaved the involuntary sigh,
And how the loss your soul oppress'd
Of that ill-cherish'd when possess'd, --
Yet when the twinkling eye has cast
One look, and knows it is the last,
And while that look is fixed behind,
In every melancholy wind
A myriad sorrowing voices come,
The sighs of a remembered home,
A long and terrible farewell
Pronounced by lips invisible:
When many an eye with rapture gleaming,
And many a smile with joyance teeming,
That may have saved you from despair,
Or lightened up your sojourn there,
By after-misery sorely tried,
In death embalmed and sanctified,
Have a new life within your brain,
And seem to gaze and beat again. --
Then thoughts of pain are all forgot,
But pleasure's memory passes not:
Yet this by some distortion strange
Its very being fain must change
Using a stern reflective power,
To dim with gloom that parting hour,
As the low trembling spirit strays
Amid the smiles of other days.

These are the eras of Existence,
The seasons these when all resistance
To time and fate must ever seem
A futile unconsoling dream.
So much of life, we feel, is past,
Whene'er we murmur forth "the last," --
So nearer are we to the shore,
Where time and things of time are o'er,
Where all is Present, and the Past
Of aught can never be the Last.





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