Memory's Mansion

In Memory's Mansion are wonderful rooms,          And I wander about them at will;     And I pause at the casements, where boxes of blooms          Are sending sweet scents o'er the sill.     I lean from a window that looks on a lawn:          From a turret that looks on the wave.     But I draw down the shade, when I see on some glade,          A stone standing guard, by a grave.     To Memory's attic I clambered one day,          When the roof was resounding with rain.     And there, among relics long hidden away,          I rummaged with heart-ache and pain.     A hope long surrendered and covered with dust,          A pastime, out-grown, and forgot,     And a fragment of love, all corroded with rust,          Were lying heaped up in one spot.     And there on the floor of that garret was tossed          A friendship too fragile to last,     With pieces of dearly bought pleasures, that cost          Vast fortunes of pain in the past.     A fabric of passion, once ardent and bright,          As tropical sunsets in spring,     Was spread out before me - a terrible sight -          A moth-eaten rag of a thing.     Then down the steep stairway I hurriedly went,          And into fair chambers below.     But the mansion seemed filled with the old attic scent,          Wherever my footsteps would go.     Though in Memory's House I still wander full oft,          No more to the garret I climb;     And I leave all the rubbish heaped there in the loft          To the hands of the Housekeeper, Time.