[Editor: A poem by Charles Harpur.]
Memory’s Genesis.
By C. Harper.
Few men methinks can look behind,
Upon their spring-time of the past,
And when compared with it not find,
The present but a dreary waste ;
And not bewail as Adam might,
The Eden he had lost.
Yet ’tis a melancholy sweet,
To sit by moon-struck memory’side,
And hear her o’er and o’er repeat,
The story of our youthful pride ;
And paint the garden of our life,
E’re all its roses died.
When feeling heart and artless head,
By amiable fancy led,
Doom’d every man that proudly trod,
As brave and honest as a god,
And made each mincing coquet seem,
The fancy of a poet’s dream ;
A flower that might, if there ’twas prest,
Add sweetness to an Angels breast.
What time, e’re wrongs from men had driven,
That heart to deeds of kind,
Or falsehood’s cold contagion given,
That head a thought unworth Heaven,
Then memory ! seize my mind,
And hear the votary of brain,
Back to that Paradise, again.
What tho’ I now perforce shall weep
O’er the dead rust of life’s first dreams,
Which never more may cease to sleep,
And gather up her broken beams ;
Yet memory ! thy first tales impart,
A freshness to my altered heart,
Which ever chasten’d by thy generous lore,
Can pity the cold world it trusts no more.
Source:
The Australian (Sydney, NSW), Friday 10 July 1835, page 4
[Editor: The original newspaper printing incorrectly spelt Charles Harpur’s surname as Harper.]
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