Unforgotten

I purchased a first edition copy of Robert Service's The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses at auction recently, and as I cracked it open to read, the other night, I came across this photograph marking the page for the poem, "Unforgotten":

Nurse & infant, ca. 1910-1920, originally uploaded by leucanthemum b.

I know a garden where the lilies gleam,
And one who lingers in the sunshine there ;
She is than white stoled lily far more fair,
And oh, her eyes are heaven-lit with dream !

I know a garret, cold and dark and drear,
And one who toils and toils with tireless pen,
Until his brave, sad eyes grow weary –– then
He seeks the stars, pale, silent as a seer.

And ah, it's strange ; for, desolate and dim,
Between these two there rolls an ocean wide ;
Yet he is in the garden by her side
And she is in the garret there with him.

And, yet, it seems, the persons in the photograph were eventually forgotten. The book of poetry itself had a sticker inside the front cover, "WAR SERVICE LIBRARY : BOOKS ARE PROVIDED BY THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES THROUGH THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION FOR THE USE OF THE SOLDIERS AND SAILORS". No name, no identification of whose hands once held this book, and no names upon the back of the photograph. Some recent merchant had penciled in a bold $100 at the back of the book, but it seems at though nobody even cracked the spine a single time, nobody glanced over the image by the verse, from the day it marked the page.

We take for granted that our loved ones will remember us, we take for granted that pictures stored away in albums, in wallets, in frames plain or fancy will remain at the center of somebody's soul. But memories, like pictures, fade over time unless somebody constantly refreshes them.

When the fondness for those memories vanishes first, we see nothing but loss or lies in the images. It is easy for strangers to come across a box of tintypes and laugh, a daguerrotype purchased at an antique store is framed and hung on a wall purely for decoration, no heart at all behind its display. But these are cast-aways from somebody's intimate life, each with a story, a laugh, a tear.

It is profoundly sad to see old photos in a cardboard box, sold at auction for less than a dollar. Sadder still to find a single square of matte paper concealed for nearly a century, tucked away in a forgotten love poem.