Time, Memory and Mortality

Ode on Melancholy

The poem forbids the poisons and death-emblems usually sought in grief, redirects the sudden melancholy fit toward a morning rose, a rainbow on the wave, peonies and a mistress's anger, and locates melancholy's shrine inside the temple of delight itself.

Bards of Passion and of Mirth

Addressing dead poets who left their souls on earth, the poem imagines their other souls conversing among Elysian lawns, rose-scented daisies and a nightingale that sings divine truth, then turns back to the earthly works that still teach the living about sorrow, passion, glory and shame.

When I have Fears that I may cease to be

The speaker sets out three fears—of dying before his pen empties his teeming brain, before he can trace the cloudy symbols of high romance, and before he can look again on a beloved creature of an hour—and ends standing alone on the shore of the world while love and fame sink to nothing.

His Pilgrimage

The speaker outfits himself with emblematic pilgrim's gear—scallop-shell, staff, scrip, bottle and gown—and imagines his soul travelling over silver mountains to nectar fountains where its thirst ends.

The Conclusion

Eight lines describe Time as a trustee that takes youth and joy and repays only earth and dust, then turn in the closing couplet to the speaker's trust that God will raise him from that dust.

Song

Speaking to a lover about their own death, the speaker asks for no sad songs, roses or cypress but only green grass wet with showers and dew, and imagines a twilight afterwards in which they may equally happen to remember or to forget.

Passing Away

Three voices in turn—the World, the speaker's Soul, and God—declare that all things are passing away, and to each the speaker answers 'Yea', the last voice turning the refrain from decay toward winter's end, new fruit and a coming that must be waited for.

Remember

A request to be remembered turns into permission to forget, placing the survivor’s freedom from grief above the speaker’s own memorial claim.

Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

A meditation on beauty, time, and poetry’s claim to preserve the beloved beyond summer and death.

十四行诗第十八首：我可否把你比作夏日？

Sonnet 30: When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

A meditation on memory as a legal reckoning in which old losses are counted again and friendship restores what grief consumed.

十四行诗第三十首：当静思开庭

Sonnet 73: That time of year thou mayst in me behold

A meditation on ageing through late autumn, twilight, and dying fire, ending with love intensified by approaching loss.

十四行诗第七十三首：你在我身上看见暮秋