A brutish man knoweth not this, neither can a fool comprehend it, But there be secrets of the Memory, deep, wondrous, and fearful. Were I at Petra, could I not declare, My soul hath been here before me? Am I strange to the columned halls, the calm dead grandeur of Palmyra? Know I not thy mount, O Carmel! Have I not voyaged on the Danube, Nor seen the glare of Arctic snows,--nor the black tents of the Tartar? Is it then a dream, that I remember the faces of them of old, While wandering in the grove with Plato, and listening to Zeno in the porch? Paul have I seen, and Pythagoras, and the Stagyrite hath spoken me friendly, And His meek eye looked also upon me, standing with Peter in the palace. Athens and Rome, Persepolis and Sparta, am I not a freeman of you all? And chiefly can my yearning heart forget thee, O Jerusalem?-- For the strong magic of conception, mingled with the fumes of memory, Giveth me a life in all past time, yea, and addeth substance to the future. Be ye my judges, imaginative minds, full-fledged to soar into the sun, Whose grosser natural thoughts the chemistry of wisdom hath sublimed, Have ye not confessed to a feeling, a consciousness strange and vague, That ye have gone this way before, and walk again your daily life, Tracking an old routine, and on some foreign strand, Where bodily ye have never stood, finding your own footsteps? Hath not at times some recent friend looked out an old familiar, Some newest circumstance or place teemed as with ancient memories? A startling sudden flash lighteth up all for an instant, And then it is quenched, as in darkness, and leaveth the cold spirit trembling. [Illustration]