Poetry & Analysis
Selected Poems
Sad PoemsThe Lost Jewel
I held a jewel in my fingers
And went to sleep.
The day was warm, and winds were prosy;
I said: “‘T will keep.”
I woke and chid my honest fingers,—
The gem was gone;
And now an amethyst remembrance
Is all I own.
Overview Short Summary
Dickinson’s short poem is about losing something precious because one assumes it can wait. It fits short poems about regret and past mistakes because the whole loss turns on the phrase “’T will keep.”
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Carelessness: The speaker lets the jewel go unguarded.
- Regret: The gem is gone before the speaker understands its value.
- Memory: Only an amethyst remembrance remains.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is quiet, rueful, and compressed. The mood is delicate but painful.
Literary Technique Imagery and Symbols
The jewel and amethyst remembrance symbolize a lost chance that becomes memory.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The poem’s brevity makes the regret feel sudden and sharp.
Remembrance
Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time’s all-severing wave?
Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover
Thy noble heart for ever, ever more?
Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers,
From those brown hills, have melted into spring:
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
After such years of change and suffering!
Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
While the world’s tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!
No later light has lightened up my heaven,
No second morn has ever shone for me;
All my life’s bliss from thy dear life was given,
All my life’s bliss is in the grave with thee.
But, when the days of golden dreams had perished,
And even Despair was powerless to destroy,
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.
Then did I check the tears of useless passion—
Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine;
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten
Down to that tomb already more than mine.
And, even yet, I dare not let it languish,
Dare not indulge in memory’s rapturous pain;
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
How could I seek the empty world again?
Overview Short Summary
Brontë’s poem is about the long ache of lost love and the guilt of continuing to live after grief. It fits regret love poems because the speaker fears both forgetting and remembering too deeply.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Lost love: The beloved is dead, but memory remains alive.
- Regret and grief: The speaker asks forgiveness for any fading of memory.
- Survival: The poem also shows how a person learns to live after joy is gone.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is mournful, faithful, and controlled. The mood is intense because love and grief remain active after many years.
Literary Technique Imagery and Symbols
Snow, grave, northern shore, heath, fern, tide, and empty world create a landscape of memory.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The regular stanzas give discipline to overwhelming grief.
Tears, Idle Tears
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.
Overview Short Summary
Tennyson’s lyric is one of the most famous poems about past regret and vanished days. It does not name one mistake; instead, it mourns the emotional force of time itself.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Past regrets: The repeated phrase “the days that are no more” makes the past painfully present.
- Memory: The poem connects memory with tears, kisses, dawn, and loss.
- Time: The speaker feels the past as both beautiful and unreachable.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is elegiac, musical, and deeply wistful. The mood is melancholic because memory is sweet and painful at once.
Literary Technique Imagery and Symbols
Autumn fields, sails, dawn birds, casement light, and remembered kisses create layered images of longing.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The repeated refrain gives the poem a haunting, song-like structure.
Remember
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann’d:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Overview Short Summary
Rossetti’s poem is about memory after death, but it also speaks gently to regret. The speaker does not want love to become a burden of sorrow.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Memory: The poem asks to be remembered after death.
- Letting go of regret: The speaker says it is better to forget and smile than remember and be sad.
- Love and grief: Love is tender enough to release the beloved from constant mourning.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is tender, restrained, and consoling. The mood is sorrowful but peaceful.
Literary Technique Imagery and Symbols
The silent land, hand, future plans, darkness, and smile create a movement from loss to release.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The sonnet form creates a turn from wanting remembrance to blessing forgetfulness if it brings peace.
When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
Overview Short Summary
Keats writes about fear of leaving life before fulfilling art, love, and ambition. It fits poems about life regrets because it imagines all the possible futures that may never happen.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Unfulfilled potential: The poet fears dying before his mind is fully written.
- Love regret: The fair creature may never be loved or seen again.
- Mortality: Death threatens all future work and affection.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is anxious, lyrical, and contemplative. The mood is haunting because the speaker sees a future that may disappear.
Literary Technique Imagery and Symbols
Books, grain, stars, cloudy symbols, chance, and the shore of the world create images of unrealized life.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The Shakespearean sonnet moves from fear of lost art to lost love and then to a final emptying of ambition.
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