I remember, I remember
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon
Nor brought too long a day;
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away.

I remember, I remember
The roses red and white,
The violets and the lily cups–
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday,–
The tree is living yet!

I remember, I remember
Where I was used to swing,
And thought the air must rush as fresh
To swallows on the wing;
My spirit flew in feathers then
That is so heavy now,
The summer pools could hardly cool
The fever on my brow.

I remember, I remember
The fir-trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now ’tis little joy
To know I’m farther off from Heaven
Than when I was a boy.

Sad poem with a kind of Thomas Hardy/A.E. Houseman feel to it. According to Wikipedia, Hood was a humorist and a poet. He liked puns and wordplay. He certainly wasn’t feeling very humorous when he wrote I Remember, but it does have an almost pleasant sort of melancholy feel to it.

Hood was friends with Victorian novelist William Makepeace Thackeray who said of Hood: “Oh sad, marvelous picture of courage, of honesty, of patient endurance, of duty struggling against pain! … Here is one at least without guile, without pretension, without scheming, of a pure life, to his family and little modest circle of friends tenderly devoted.”
Nice epitaph.

“I’ve written some poetry I don’t understand myself.”~Carl Sandburg

photo © 1900 Brooklyn Museum | more info (via: Wylio)
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

I think I’ve mentioned here before that Mr. Shelley is not my favorite person or poet. However, he managed in Ozymandias to capture the spirit of the Biblical admonition, “Remember, O man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19)

Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian season of Lent, is about a month away, on March 9 this year. We would do well to remember the arrogant and the mighty who were fallen and forgotten before we were born and come before the Lord God of the Universe in humility and repentance.

Poetry Friday is at Wild Rose Reader this week. Check it out for more poetical lessons and entertainment.