Verse > Anthologies > The World’s Best Poetry > Vol. VI. Fancy: Sentiment
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Bliss Carman, et al., eds.  The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume VI. Fancy.  1904.
 
Poems of Sentiment: III. Memory
“There is such power”
Arlo Bates (1850–1918)
 
From “Sonnets in Shadow”

THERE is such power even in smallest things
  To bring the dear past back; a flower’s tint,
  A snatch of some old song, the fleeting glint
Of sunbeams on the wave—each vivid brings
 
The lost days up, as from the idle strings        5
  Of wind-harp sad a breeze evokes the hint
  Of antique tunes. A glove which keeps imprint
Of a loved hand the heart with torture wrings
 
By memory of a clasp meant more than speech;
  A face seen in the crowd with curve of cheek        10
Or sweep of eyelash our woe’s core can reach.
 
How strong is love to yearn, and yet how weak
  To strive with fate: the lesson all things teach,
As of the past in myriad ways they speak.
 
 
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