When years have passed, is't wise to meet again?
Body and Mind have changed; and is it wise
To take old Time, the Alterer, by surprise,
And see how he has worked in human grain?
We think that what once was, must still remain;
Ourself a ghost, we bid a ghost arise;
Two spectres look into each other's eyes,
And break the image that their hearts contain.
Mix not the Past and Present: let the Past
Remain in peace within its jewelled shrine,
And drag it not into the hum and glare;
Mix not two faces in the thoughts that last;
The one thou knewest, fair in every line,
And one unknown, which may be far from fair.
“I do not think altogether the worse of a book for having survived the author a generation or two. I have more confidence in the dead than the living.” — Hazlitt
5 June 2014
Let the Past Remain in Peace
Eugene Lee-Hamilton, "Meeting of Ghosts," Sonnets of the Wingless Hours (Portland: Thomas B. Mosher, 1908), p. 65: