If Memory Serves ...

Sounds like a tennis metaphor to me--if memory serves.

But, of course, it isn't. It comes from the era of servants and slaves. In fact, the earliest reference the OED has for the clause is from Federalist #22, late 1787--Alexander Hamilton, who writes this ringing memorable sentence:

The Earl of Chesterfield (if my memory serves me right), in a letter to his court, intimates that his success in an important negotiation must depend on his obtaining a major's commission for one of those deputies.

Okay, so it's not so memorable. Or ringing. But Hamilton does employ the servant metaphor. And that metaphor appeared, unbidden, in my head last night and this morning when my own servant memory once again betrayed me.

Such betrayals are more and more common these, uh, Latter Days. I see former students; I can't remember their names. I can't recall films, actors, TV shows--pretty much anything specific. At least not right away. Sometimes a few hours' rumination will help. And some self-flagellation is useful. Other times I give up and Google.

But what caused this latest treachery was a Robert Frost poem--"Fire and Ice." Here it is in all of its massive length:

Some say the world will end in fire,        

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire 

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate    

To know that for destruction ice

Is also great      

And would suffice.

It appeared in December 1920 on p. 67 in Harper's--I just looked at a .pdf of it--and then appeared in Frost's book New Hampshire (1923), a volume that won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. (Included in it are such gems as "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" and "Nothing Gold Can Stay.")

I just checked ABE, and you can get a signed first printing of New Hampshire for a mere $7500! (My birthday is next month ... hint ... hint ....) (Link to book info on ABE.)

Anyway, "Fire and Ice" is one of a handful of Frost poems I've memorized (we're getting to the memory thing, aren't we!), and last night--for a reason I can't recall (!!)--the poem arrived in my head as Joyce and I were talking about something just before Lights Out.

I recited the poem for her. But stumbled. Something didn't seem ... right. I flogged my brain, but no obedience ensued. I'd already turned off my phone and did not want to boot up again ... and I was too lazy to go downstairs to check a Frost collection.

This morning, though, first thing, as soon as my phone was ready, I asked--and got what you see above. And I realized I'd been practicing it (thrice weekly) incorrectly--and for, I think, a very  long time.

I was doing this:

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate    

To say that ice is also nice

And would suffice.

Messed up, eh? A Dr. Seussy kind of change, really.

This happens to me now and then. A poem I've known for a long time, as I rehearse or recite it, just doesn't seem ... right. So I check. And realize I've been muffing it for months.

So it goes in the House of Memory where my servants can be such traitors.

Or on the tennis court, where, sometimes, when Memory serves, I can't return.