A Lament
O world! O life! O time!On whose last steps I climb,Trembling at that where I had stood before;When will return the glory of your prime?No more--Oh, never more!
Out of the day and nightA joy has taken flight;Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,Move my faint heart with grief, but with delightNo more--Oh, never more!
Words in this poem
- hoar v. t.
- To become moldy or musty. [AS. harian to grow gray.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Lament is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 2, Project Gutenberg ebook #4798; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Lament, in Ode to the West Wind, and Other Poems (1816–1819), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #4798, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/shelley-later-poems/a-lament.html, id L16447.
Form and metre
A Lament is 10 lines in 2 stanzas of 5 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABAB. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%). 95% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.5 syllables. 20% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 AABAB timeA · climbA · beforeB · primeA · moreB
- 2 AABAB nightA · flightA · hoarB · delightA · moreB
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| O world! O life! O time! | 6 | ······ |
| On whose last steps I climb, | 6 | ······ |
| Trembling at that where I had stood before; | 10 | /˘········ |
| When will return the glory of your prime? | 10 | ··˘/·/˘··· |
| No more--Oh, never more! | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Out of the day and night | 6 | ······ |
| A joy has taken flight; | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar, | 9 | ···/˘·/˘· |
| Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight | 10 | ········˘/ |
| No more--Oh, never more! | 6 | ···/˘· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.