Analysis of The Past

Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 (Horsham) – 1822 (Lerici)



I.
Wilt thou forget the happy hours
Which we buried in Love’s sweet bowers,
Heaping over their corpses cold
Blossoms and leaves, instead of mould?
Blossoms which were the joys that fell,
And leaves, the hopes that yet remain.

II.
Forget the dead, the past? Oh, yet
There are ghosts that may take revenge for it,
Memories that make the heart a tomb,
Regrets which glide through the spirit’s gloom,
And with ghastly whispers tell
That joy, once lost, is pain.


Scheme ABBCCDE AXXFFDE
Poetic Form
Metre 1 110101010 111001110 10101101 10010111 10100111 01011101 1 01010111 1111110111 100110101 011110101 0110101 111111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 456
Words 83
Sentences 7
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 7, 7
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 26
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 179
Words per stanza (avg) 41
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 20, 2023

24 sec read
496

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is regarded by critics as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. more…

All Percy Bysshe Shelley poems | Percy Bysshe Shelley Books

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