The Past by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The speaker asks whether happy hours shared in love will be forgotten, picturing them as buried beneath fallen joys and surviving hopes. Memories and regrets are imagined as haunting the heart, turning lost joy into pain.
By Percy Bysshe Shelley · Genre: Lyric Poetry, Elegiac Poetry · 148 words
First lines
1.
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.
2.
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.
Genres
- Lyric Poetry — Two rhymed stanzas address someone directly about shared happiness, memory, and regret.
- Elegiac Poetry — Lost happy hours are pictured as buried bodies, while memories and regrets haunt the heart.
Tags
memory · regret · lost happiness · love · forgetting
What this Textopian page supports
The Past is listed on Textopian as a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, dated Date unknown.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Lyric Poetry, Elegiac Poetry
- Length: 148 words
- Structure: 1 section, 4 paragraphs
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