And
yet more strange is it that the memory, by some subtle alchemy, has the
power of involving in a delicate golden mist days of childhood and
boyhood which one knows as a matter of fact not to have been happy. For
instance, my own memory continues to clothe my early schooldays with a
kind of sunlit happiness, though I was not only not consciously happy,
but distinctly and consciously unhappy. But memory refuses to retain
the elements of unhappiness, the constant apprehension, that hung over
one like a cloud, of punishment, and even ill-usage. I was not unduly
punished at school, and I was certainly never ill-used. But one saw
others suffer, and my own sensitive and timid nature perpetually
foreboded disaster. Day after day as a little boy I longed for home
surroundings and home affections as eagerly as the hart desires the
water-brooks. But memory pushes all that aside, and obstinately insists
on regarding the whole period in an idyllic and buoyant light.
I walk round the borders, which are all full of the little glossy
spikes of snowdrops pushing up, struggling through the crusted earth.
The sad hero of _Maud_ walked "in a ghastly glimmer," and found "the
shining daffodil dead." I walk in the soft twilight, that is infinitely
tender, soothing, and sweet, and find the daffodil taking on his new
life; and there rises in my heart an uplifted yearning, not so much for
the good days that are dead, but that I may somehow come to possess the
peace that underlies the memory of them all--not handle it for a moment
and lay it down, but possess it or be possessed by it for ever.
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