Victoria Skelton's "Memory" speaks directly to its subject as if it were a difficult person, someone the speaker loves and has struggled to help. The memory is called great, strong and brilliant, yet it behaves like a stubborn child. The speaker lifts it up and it pushes back. She even tries carrying it, but nothing seems to work.
The feeling running through the poem is a mix of frustration, tenderness and exhaustion. She admires what the memory could be ("You are so much more than what you make yourself out to be") while admitting she can't reach it. The line about it being better to try and fail than never to try at all turns into a quiet accusation: the speaker has tried, and the memory hasn't.
By the end, the mood settles into sad acceptance. Calling the memory a "beautiful burden" captures the conflict neatly, since it is something precious and heavy at once. The final line, "Memory I'm letting you go," feels less like anger than like a painful, necessary release.