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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.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

24 sec read
463

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABBCCDE AXXFFDE
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 456
Words 83
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 7, 7

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…

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    "The Past" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2023. Web. 29 Mar. 2023. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/29270/the-past>.

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