The White Poppy

A riot of scarlet on gold, the red poppy of our native fields tosses
heavy tresses with gipsy abandon; her sister of the sea-shore is
golden, a yellow blossom that loves the keen salt savour of the spray.
Of another hue is the poppy of history, of romance, of the muse. White
as the stark death-shroud, pallid as the cheeks of that queen of a
silent land whose temples she languorously crowns, ghost-like beside
her fuller-blooded kin, she droops dream-laden, Papaver somniferum,
the poppy of the magic juice of oblivion. In the royal plenitude of
summer, the scarlet blooms will sometimes seem but a red cry from
earth in memory of the many dews of battle that have drenched these
acres in years gone by, for little end but that these same ''bubbles
of blood'' might glow to-day; the yellow flower does but hint of the
gold that has dashed a thousand wrecks at her feet around these
shores: for happier suggestion we must turn to her of the pallid
petals, our white Lady of Consolation. Fitting hue to typify the
crowning blessing of forgetfulness! Too often the sable robes of night
dissemble sleeplessness, remorse, regret, self-questioning. Let black,
then, rather stand for hideous memory: white for blessed blank
oblivion, happiest gift of the gods! For who, indeed, can say that the
record of his life is not crowded with failure and mistake, stained
with its petty cruelties of youth, its meannesses and follies of later
years, all which storm and clamour incessantly at the gates of memory,
refusing to be shut out? Leave us alone, O gods, to remember our
felicities, our successes: only aid us, ye who recall no gifts, aptly
and discreetly to forget.

Discreetly, we say; for it is a tactful forgetfulness that makes for
happiness. In the minor matter, for instance, of small money
obligations, that shortness of memory which the school of Professors
Panurge and Falstaff rashly praises, may often betray into some
unfortunate allusion or reference to the subject which shall pain the
delicate feelings of the obliger; or, if he be of coarser clay, shall
lead him in his anger to express himself with unseemliness, and
thereby to do violence to his mental tranquillity, in which alone, as
Marcus Aurelius teacheth, lieth the perfection of moral character.
This is to be a stumbling-block and an offence against the brethren.
It is better to keep just memory enough to avoid such hidden rocks and
shoals; in which thing Mr Swiveller is our great exemplar, whose
mental map of London was a chart wherein every creditor was carefully
''buoyed.''

The wise man prays, we are told, for a good digestion: let us add to
the prayer -- and a bad memory. Truly we are sometimes tempted to
think that we are the only ones cursed with this