Lyric Poem · Sad

To Mary Shelley

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Reading room

1My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone,

2And left me in this dreary world alone?

3Thy form is here indeed — a lovely one —

4But thou art fled, gone down the dreary road,

5That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode;

6Thou sittest on the hearth of pale despair,

7Where

8For thine own sake I cannot follow thee.

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“To Mary Shelley” by Percy Bysshe Shelley — quilloak.com/poems/to-mary-shelley

Quick facts

Poem: To Mary Shelley
Poet: Percy Bysshe Shelley
Length: 8 lines
Form: Lyric Poem, Short Poems
Themes: Sad, 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: 8 lines · one 8-line stanza
Line length: Mostly 10-syllable lines (pentameter length).

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Author record: Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822
Source record: PoetryDBTo Mary Shelley 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 9fddcc7788e85970…
Editorial handling: Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.

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Lyric Poem Short Poems Sad Short

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