Reflections - Written In A Book Of Miscellaneous Articles Poem by Anonymous British

How like the map that marks my varied way
Through life, these pages seem!
A specked piece - a mix'd display
Of sadness, dulness, passion, pain, and play
One heap of sound - one variegated dream.

How many a passion difficult; and there
Loud flourishes that leave,
On all who hear their notes, the mere
Remembrance of their noise; and now appear
Movements and times to teach me how to grieve.

Here love's enchanting strains, whose stops and bars,
And melting cadences,
Bring long lost echoes to my ears
Of sounds, which oft have hung upon my tears
And weigh'd them down - pure drops of ecstacies.

Like these mix'd pages I can read my life,
In fancy hear its echoes play-
Its hurried chords - its passion's strife-
Those sweet deceptive flights with which 'twas rife,
Transient as sound, but mark'd on memory.