Lyric Poem · Sad
To Mary Shelley
My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone,
And left me in this dreary world alone?
Thy form is here indeed — a lovely one —
But thou art fled, gone down the dreary road,
That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode;
Thou sittest on the hearth of pale despair,
Where
For thine own sake I cannot follow thee.
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“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).
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
- 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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