Meanwhile we saw a corps of sentry ghosts, Standing erect the farthest Eastern shore on, And many thousand stars, above those coasts, _Flashed like the Arabic of a fiery Koran;_ Then those great captains of the heavenly hosts, Orion, Sirius, and Aldebóran, On the dark field of Heaven took their stations; And calmly wheeled the close-ranked constellations.
No outposts of the Morn marked the approach Of the Hœlios’ chariot; no gleams, or tinges Upon the tent of Darkness dared encroach; But sudden brilliance pierced its dusky fringes; Wide swung the Morning’s gates upon their hinges; Those burning horses, and that flaming coach Sprang out upon the ocean, through the gateway: Night struck her tattered tent, and vanished straightway.
[Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by George Payne Rainsford James, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the District of Massachusetts.]
Memory is certainly a very strange gift, or quality of the mind—or whatever else it may be rightly termed; for I am no philosopher, and but little acquainted with the technology of metaphysics. It seems often a capricious faculty, selecting its own objects, and amusing itself with them to the rejection of others. But I am not quite sure that this imputation upon memory is justified. I must admit that with myself, as I suppose is the case with others, when I try to recall the past, the lady often proves restive with me, and without any apparent cause, recalls all the particulars of certain scenes, and omits other passages of life close by them. Nor is this to be attributed always to the particular interest of the scenes she recalls; for some of them are quite unimportant, light, and even ludicrous, while things affecting one’s whole destiny, if not utterly forgotten, are brought back but indistinctly. I suspect, however, that the fact is, memory is like a sentinel who will not let any one enter the treasury she guards without the countersign, even though it be the master of the treasure himself.
The objects and events that we remember best are, in fact, those for which we have learned the countersign by heart, and the moment that any accidental circumstance furnishes us with the pass-word, apparently forgotten, the door is thrown open, and we behold them again, somewhat dusty perhaps, but plain and distinct. Acts never die. They at least are immortal; and I do not think they ever die to memory either. They sleep within, and it only requires to have the key to waken them. The time will come when all shall be awakened: when every door of the heart shall be thrown open, and when the spirits of man’s deeds and thoughts will stand revealed to his own eyes at least—perhaps to be his bright companions in everlasting joy—perhaps his tormentors in the hell which he has dug for himself.