Lyric Poem · Nature
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 night
A joy has taken flight;
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more — Oh, never more!
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“A Lament” by Percy Bysshe Shelley — quilloak.com/poems/a-lament
Quick facts
- Poem
- A Lament
- Poet
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Length
- 10 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Nature, Winter, Spring, Short
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 10 lines · 2 quintains
- Line length
- Mostly 6-syllable lines (trimeter length).
- Refrain
- “No more — Oh, never more!”Repeated lines act as the poem's hinge or drumbeat.
Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a lyric poem, or run your own draft through the form checker to see the same measurements on your lines. How we measure · Report a mistake
Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822
- Source record
- PoetryDBA Lament by percy-bysshe-shelley, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 162de7edd6ed0655…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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