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Sonnet 122 , Week 145
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The writer will remember the beloved through into eternity - or at least until the mortal body and brain decay. Interesting bit of agnosticism there. I construe "tables" as equivalent to memories, in the sense of Latin "tabula," the slate upon which something is written. The idea of remembering the beloved however long one's faculties persist, is a pleasant sentiment.(I happen to think of an episode of "Futurama," from 13 May 2001, in which Fry downloads the personality and holographic image of Lucy Liu into a robot. When the robot meets its demise, the faux Lucy Liu tells Fry, "I will always love/remember you." Immediately the robot core says, "Memory deleted.")
Mod
Here is what I have at etymology site...
late 12c., "board, slab, plate," from Old French table "board, square panel, plank; writing table; picture; food, fare" (11c.), and late Old English tabele "writing tablet, gaming table," from Germanic *tabal (source also of Dutch tafel, Danish tavle, Old High German zabel "board, plank," German Tafel). Both the French and Germanic words are from Latin tabula "a board, plank; writing table; list, schedule; picture, painted panel," originally "small flat slab or piece" usually for inscriptions or for games (source also of Spanish tabla, Italian tavola), of uncertain origin, related to Umbrian tafle "on the board."
The sense of "piece of furniture with the flat top and legs" first recorded c. 1300 (the usual Latin word for this was mensa (see mensa); Old English writers used bord (see board (n.1)). Especially the table at which people eat, hence "food placed upon a table" (c. 1400 in English). The meaning "arrangement of numbers or other figures on a tabular surface for convenience" is recorded from late 14c. (as in table of contents, mid-15c.).
https://www.etymonline.com/word/table
Mod
I once helped pack up some possessions of a friends deceased partner. And when we came to books they had inscribed as gifts to the late partnet....they threw them away. When I think of it now it brings tears to my eyes. But they didn't want anyone else to have the inscrption and the book only had meaning to them at this point as something of the consciousness of the deceased.
Everyone grieves differently....
Full charactered with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain,
Beyond all date, even to eternity:
Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be missed.
That poor retention could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
To trust those tables that receive thee more:
To keep an adjunct to remember thee
Were to import forgetfulness in me.