"Vedi Napoli! e poi muori!"
Memory! beloved memory! to us thou art as hope to other men. The present--solitary, unexciting--where are its charms? The future hath no joys in store for us; and may bereave us of some of the few faint pleasures that still are ours.
What then is left us--old before our time--but to banquet on the past?
Memory! thou art in us, as the basil of the enamoured Florentine. [Footnote 1: See Keats' poem taken from Boccaccio.] Thy blossoms, thy leaves,--green, fresh, and fragrant,--draw their nurture, receive their every colouring, from what was dearest to us on earth. And are they not watered by our tears?
The poet tells us--
"Nessun maggior dolore
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria."
But it is not so. Where is he of the tribe of the unfortunate, who would not gladly barter the contemplation of present wretchedness, for the remembrance, clogged as it is by a thousand woes, of a time when joyous visions flitted across life's path?
Yes! though the contrast, the succeeding moment, should cut him to the soul.
But
"Joy's recollection is no longer joy,
Whilst sorrow's memory is a sorrow still."