Pictures of Memory

Among the beautiful pictures
  That hang on Memory’s wall.
Is one of a dim old forest,
  That seemeth best of all:
Not for its gnarled oaks olden.
  
Dark with the mistletoe;
Not for the violets golden
  That sprinkle the vale below.
Not for the milk-white lilies
  That lean from the fragrant hedge.

Coquetting all day with the sunbeams,
  And stealing their shining edge;
Not for the vines on the upland
  Where the bright red berries be.
Nor the pinks, nor the pale, sweet cowslip,
  It seemeth the best to me.

I once had a little brother,
  With eyes that were dark and deep—
In the lap of that old dim forest
  He lieth in peace asleep:
Light as the down of the thistle.
  Free as the winds that blow.

We roved there the beautiful summers.
  The summers of long ago;
But his feet on the hills grew weary,
  And, one of the autumn eves,
I made for my little brother
  A bed of the yellow leaves.

Sweetly his pale arms folded
  My neck in a meek embrace,
As the light of immortal beauty
  Silently covered his face:
And when the arrows of sunset
  Lodged in the tree-tops bright,
He fell, in his saint-like beauty,
  Asleep by the gates of light.
Therefore, of all the pictures
  That hang on Memory's wall,
The one of the old dim forest
  Seemeth the best of all.