AND so man lives
Between those shadowy gates
Where darkness covers up his memory,
And thought with thought forever separates
The disconnected things that he can see.
Those two strange steeps:
One whence he wakes.
And how he cannot tell;
One in which he falls
And knows not how he fell.
Where life with memory breaks.
Memory like water
Surging round our ears
Brings its echoes, softer
Than the sound of laughter—
Laughter of some strange forgotten years.
Someone gazing in a stream sees reflections hurry by;
Someone underneath a tree searching all its greenery;
Someone looking at a face holds a flying memory.
What we are and what we see
Are only shreds of memory.
Broken shreds and fragments pass
Through a twisted looking-glass.
