“Oh, my friend!  I think sometimes, could I recall the days that are past, which among them should I choose? not those ‘merrier days,’ not the ‘pleasant days of hope,’ not ’those wanderings with a fair-hair’d maid,’ which I have so often and so feelingly regretted, but the days, Coleridge, of a mother’s fondness for her school-boy.  What would I give to call her back to earth for one day!—­on my knees to ask her pardon for all those little asperities of temper which, from time to time, have given her gentle spirit pain!—­and the day, my friend, I trust, will come.  There will be ‘time enough’ for kind offices of love, if ‘Heaven’s eternal year’ be ours.  Here-after, her meek spirit shall not reproach me.”

In the last paragraph of the poem is a hint of “The Old Familiar Faces,” that was to follow it in the course of a few months.

Lines 52, 53. And one, above the rest.  Probably Coleridge is meant.

Page 24. Written soon after the Preceding Poem.

The poem is addressed to Lamb’s mother.  Lamb seems to have sent a copy to Southey, although the letter containing it has not been perserved, for we find Southey passing it on to his friend C.W.W.  Wynn on November 29, 1797, with a commendation:  “I know that our tastes differ much in poetry, and yet I think you must like these lines by Charles Lamb.”

The following passage in Rosamund Gray, which Lamb was writing at this time, is curiously like these poems in tone.  It occurs in one of the letters from Elinor Clare to her friend—­letters in which Lamb seems to describe sometimes his own feelings, and sometimes those of his sister, on their great sorrow:—­

“Maria! shall not the meeting of blessed spirits, think you, be something like this?—­I think, I could even now behold my mother without dread—­I would ask pardon of her for all my past omissions of duty, for all the little asperities in my temper, which have so often grieved her gentle spirit when living.  Maria!  I think she would not turn away from me.

“Oftentimes a feeling, more vivid than memory, brings her before me—­I see her sit in her old elbow chair—­her arms folded upon her lap—­a tear upon her cheek, that seems to upbraid her unkind daughter for some inattention—­I wipe it away and kiss her honored lips.

“Maria! when I have been fancying all this, Allan will come in, with his poor eyes red with weeping, and taking me by the hand, destroy the vision in a moment.

“I am prating to you, my sweet cousin, but it is the prattle of the heart, which Maria loves.  Besides, whom have I to talk to of these things but you—­you have been my counsellor in times past, my companion, and sweet familiar friend.  Bear with me a little—­I mourn the ‘cherishers of my infancy.’”

* * * * *

Page 25. Written on Christmas Day, 1797.

Mary Lamb, to whom these lines were addressed, after seeming to be on the road to perfect recovery, had suddenly had a relapse necessitating a return to confinement from the lodging in which her brother had placed her.