The Greater Trumps: (15) The Past

She is a stately figure, tall, elegant, beautiful and wise. Her long hair is as white as snow, and her robes are as dark as night. She looks out of a window, down into a distant courtyard. In that courtyard a child is playing - and that child is the person she once was. Beyond the courtyard are walls; beyond the walls, a river flows. As we look upon this scene, certain ambiguities begin to manifest: the window looks like a mirror's frame, or perhaps the frame of a picture; the woman's face shows both triumph and regret; her robes are rich velvet or austere fuligin. Do the walls constrain, or do they protect?

And that is the nature of this image. The Past portrays our capacity for Reflection and Retrospection - we learn from History, both personal and public; the Past defines us somehow. We might feel regret or triumph, having survived the Past and paid a certain cost. We never escape it, and yet the fact that it remains with us gives us a sense of existence and something to think about - always.

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I'm probably over-romanticising this image, but it brings to mind a particular piece by Lord Byron...

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that 's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

The Past is always with us. It's both a comforting and a disconcerting thought; but the way I am, I think of it mostly with fondness, forgetting the ill that is gone by and remembering the good times that continue to encourage me.