Nostalgia

“ So long as the mind keeps silent in the motionless world of its hopes, everything is reflected and arranged in the unity of its nostalgia. But with its first move this world cracks and tumbles: an infinite number of shimmering fragments is offered to the understanding. We must despair of ever reconstructing the familiar, calm surface which would give us peace of heart. ”

“ Why is the wearied town-tied brain-worker sensible of a nostalgia hardly less poignant when he calls to mind how the fires of day kindled across some scene of snow or sea with which his eyes were once familiar? ”

“ Great emotion, for instance, drives it forth, explaining thus appearances at a distance, and a hundred other phenomena that my investigations of abnormal personality have forced me to recognize as true. And nostalgia often is the means of egress, the channel along which all the inner forces and desires of the heart stream elsewhere toward their fulfillment in some person, place, or dream. ”

“ Since this preoccupation, this curiosity, this nostalgia, has exercised so enormous a fascination in the past, I found it not impossible to imagine some modern favourite of fortune falling a victim to this malady of the soul ”

“ The burning sense of regret, the anguish of nostalgia, the relinquishment of an accustomed sphere, its prospects and ideals, the revolt against the uncouth and rude conditions of the new status, the gradual reluctant naturalization to a new world,—these were forgotten save as the picturesque elements of sorrow and despair that balanced the joys, the interest, the devil-may-care joviality, the adventure, the strange wild companionship,—all that made the tale worth rehearsing in the flare and the flicker of the fireside glow. ”

“ But thinking about wealth and having it on your hands are two different things, and I was beginning to remember almost with nostalgia, the tough old times when every day was an adventure, full of cops and missed meals and a thousand unappeased desires. ”

“ Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. ”

“ And Memory sits there every day; she is the guardian of these wares. My heart, it often wends that way, to see this shop and how it fares. My heart peers through the window-pane with eyes like pools of smiles and tears, so glad and sad to see again the curios of bygone years. Says Memory, "O heart, draw near! Here is a little shining dream, and here a rippling song of cheer; and here, your childhood's fairy stream." An antique shop this Past of mine; its gems kept safe by Memory; each kind word heard, how they do shine, set in rare Fancy's filigree. ”

“ Memories that linger o'er the past,
But into softer shadow cast,
Like lovely pictures that recall
One look, but that most dear of all.
When life's more fierce desires depart,
Aware how false and vain they are,—
While youth yet lingers at the heart,
And hope, although it looks afar,—
Then takes the lute, its softest tone,
It murmurs of emotions gone.
Then charms the picture most, it brings
So many unforgotten things.
Then breathes within the gifted scroll
A deeper meaning to the soul,—
For that itself hath learnt before
The truth and secret of its lore. ”

“ And a quail's call, and around us a great silence
That held at its core old memories
Of pioneers, and dead days, forgotten things!
I'll never forget how you looked that day. Your hair
Was turning silver now, but still your eyes
Burned as of old, and the rich olive glow
In your cheeks shone, with not a line or wrinkle!—
You seemed to me perfection—a youth, a man!
And now you talked of the world with the old wit,
And now of the soul—how such a man went down
Through folly or wrong done by him, and how
Man's death cannot end all,
There must be life hereafter!... ”

“ It is pleasant to look back upon past pleasures, to recall the beautiful scenes we have once witnessed, the smile of friendship, the tear of sympathy, the glance of affection, the tone of love, or to listen again to the thrilling sounds of soul-enrapturing music, that has once delighted us. But so varied is our pathway of life, that a thorough retrospection must ever be fraught with sad as well as pleasing reflection. Is memory thus faithful to her trust? ”

“ We are stricken by memory sometimes, and old reflections rush back to us as vivid as in the time when they were our daily talk. We think of faces, and they return to us as plainly as when their presence gladdened our eyes and their {460} accents thrilled in our ears. Many an affection that apparently came to an end, and dropped out of life one way or another, was only lying dormant. A scent, a note of music, a voice long unheard, the stirring of the Summer breeze may startle us with the sudden revival of long forgotten feelings and thoughts. ”

“ Memory can glean, but can never renew. It brings us joys faint as the perfume of the flowers, faded and dried of the Summer that is gone. Who is there whose heart is dead to the memories of his childhood days? Old times steal upon us, quietly making us young again, even amid the din of business and the whirl of household cares! The care-worn face relaxes its tension and the saddened brow clears for a time as some well-remembered scene rushes through the mind, bringing back the childhood home and the loved faces which met around the daily board. ”

“ Thus we find the aged invariably attached to the days that are gone, more than to those that are passing, or to come; even recollected pain loses its anguish, and the traces of memory though broken and imperfect are delightful to the eye that has grown dim to the illusions of hope. But to us, my young friends, who have never felt affliction to disgust us with life, or age to paralize the ardour of fancy, still to us memory opens a full source of pleasure. ”

“ Its fever and its frolic and its fun;
The old life with its din, its laughter and its sin —
And chuck me in the gutter when it’s done.
Ah, well! it’s past and gone, and the memory is wan,
That conjures up each old familiar face ”

“ How readily the mind adopts the phraseology of habit, when the sentiment it once clothed no longer exists. Would that my past pursuits were even in recollection, the aspect of enjoyments. But even my memory has lost its character of energy, and the past, like the present, appears one unwearied scence of chill and vapid existence. No sweet point of reflection seizes on the recollective powers. No actual joy woos my heart’s participation, and no prospect of future felicity glows on the distant vista of life, or awakens the quick throb of hope and expectation; all is cold, sullen and dreary. ”

“ Who shall say that the past does not live! An odour will sometimes set the blood coursing in an old emotion, and a line of poetry is the resurrection and the life. For a moment I forgot Harriet and the agent, I forgot myself, I even forgot the book on my knee—everything but that hour in the past—a view of shimmering hot housetops, the heat and dust and noise of an August evening in the city, the dumb weariness of it all, the loneliness, the longing for green fields ”

“ The Lanes of Memory Adown the lanes of memory bloom all the flowers of yesteryear, And looking back we smile to see life's bright red roses reappear, The little sprigs of mignonette that smiled upon us as we passed, The pansy and the violet, too sweet, we thought those days, to last. The gentle mother by the door caresses still her lilac blooms, And as we wander back once more we seem to smell the old perfumes, We seem to live again the joys that once were ours so long ago When we were little girls and boys, with all the charms we used to know. But living things grow old and fade ”

“ And these memories of a time for ever fled, these lights which gladden or stir again your old heart sad and cold, these are the simple and fruitful beliefs, the transports of the soul, the insane devotions, the ardent passions, and all those orgies of heart and sense, all those frenzies of imagination, and all those follies of youth, which cause the wise to cry out so loudly, and which are the only feast-days of life. ”

“ Time glided rapidly away;—months flew by, and with sorrow and shame must I confess that the memories of the past, the memories of the bright, happy days of my innocence intruded but little on the life which I led. ”

“ Swiftly our pleasures glide away, Our hearts recall the distant day With many sighs; The moments that are speeding fast We heed not, but the past,—the past, More highly prize.
Onward its course the present keeps, Onward the constant current sweeps, Till life is done; And, did we judge of time aright, The past and future in their flight Would be as one.
Let no one fondly dream again, That Hope and all her shadowy train Will not decay; Fleeting as were the dreams of old, Remembered like a tale that's told, They pass away. ”

“ Age, with its miserable train of cares, and sorrows, and diseases, was remembered only as the trouble of a dream, from which they had joyously awoke. The fresh gloss of the soul, so early lost, and without which the world's successive scenes had been but a gallery of faded pictures, again threw its enchantment over all their prospects. They felt like new-created beings, in a new-created universe. ”

“ Feeling the eyes moisten again at the memory of old loves, and of those far-away first embraces which seemed to open the gates of paradise and create the world anew; at remembrances of old hopes too, which proved still-born, and of old distresses, which often enough proved still-born likewise,—the whole of these simplified now, sanctified, the tumult of them stilled, along with the hot, young blood which went to make them, by the kindly torpor of increasing age and the approaching footsteps of greatly reconciling Death. ”

“ For no sooner are we gone hence than, even for such brief times as our memories may endure, we are apt to grow by processes of accumulative transformation into what we never were. Thou kind, kind fate, therefore—never enough named and celebrated—that biddest the sun of memory rise on our finished but imperfect lives, and then lengthenest or shortenest the little day of posthumous reminiscence, according as thou seest there is need of early twilight or of deeper shadows! ”

“ And yet one feels a trifle sad to part with the old year, when he comes to think it over. As memory’s bob-tail car pulls us down the long lane of the past, one looks out of the window at the well-remembered objects of former days, and his heart saddens. ”

“ In moments of after coolness or anger, the mind should fly from the sated present to the million tender and freshening associations of the past. With these associations the affection renews its youth. How vast a store of melting reflections, how countless an accumulation of the spells that preserve constancy, does that love forfeit, in which the memory only commences with possession! ”

“ Thus may one moment minister to years; and the life-wearied heart of old age by one delightful remembrance be restored to primal joy—the glory of the past brought beamingly upon the faded present—and the world that is obscurely passing away from our eyes re-illumined with the visions of its early morn. The shows of nature are indeed evanescent, but their spiritual influences are immortal; and from that grove now glowing in the sunlight may your heart derive a delight that shall utterly perish but in the grave. ”

“ A hot flood of eagerness fills me,
More wond'rous than dream-working wine,
The far call of memory thrills me;
My hand groping blindly for thine . . .
But the days of the Earth-Love have vanished—
The world that can never be mine. ”

“ What fun we shall have to-morrow!’ Never ‘How happy we are to-day!’ And yet what is the past, when we think of it, but a dream vanished into darkness—the future but an uncertain glimmer that may never brighten into dawn? ”

“ Like the dying echo of the last tones of the departed, it is full of hallowed memories, and cherished associations, that haunt the inner chambers of the imagination, and linger with a mournful tenderness about the better feelings of the heart. ”

“ Just as the idle school-boy will pause beside the limpid stream to watch its eddying waters as they go on and on, "never hasting, never resting," so I sit to-night in the haze of the years that are dead, with the mind sadly reminiscent, and I watch the shadows as they seem to sketch upon the memory the familiar faces of our loved and lost, and I hear their laughter and songs—grateful echoes from the realm of the long ago. ”

“ Is there anywhere in the living world where one can throw off everything of the past, where one can take up a new life, and memory doesn't come?"
She shook her head. She was more composed now. The moment of feverish excitement had passed. ”

“ And in the dim fancy of age, in faint whispers, speak voices whose tones are never to be heard again; awakening old affections for those at rest, subdued indeed by time, but yet unextinguished, and slumbering in hidden corners of memory, and appealing to the heart of the living, and begging still to be cherished there. ”

“ These old memories are always fresh; when we speak of past dangers we seem to be in the midst of them again; when we recall our old friends, we again press their hands in imagination, and our beloved is again seated on our knee, and we look in her face, thinking, "She is beautiful!" ”

“ We stray as the moonbeams smile sweet through the dell
Unheeded the moments, unmarked in their going,
Nor dreamed we of woe in the sound of "farewell."
Is it lost—all the light of the fair morning vision?
Is spirit to spirit unanswering, cold?
No, it never shall die, while in memory's Elysian
It lingers in beauty and brightness untold.
Love is love, and though Fate blasts our hope vines may sever
From the stay which their tendrils in fondness entwine
Yet the past of our joy we must cherish forever
And spirit meet spirit at memory's shrine.
A MEMORY. "Indulgent Memory wakes, and, lo! ”

“ In a little we are upon our way again, a lessening memory at our backs; growing ruddy and merry, laughing, deriding, scoffing, enjoying, taking the blandishments of the moment with a heart of the lightest. ”