Time’s Sea Hath Been Five Years at Its Slow Ebb
Time’s Sea Hath Been Five Years at Its Slow Ebb - fact Summary
Reflection on Past Love
Keats’s sonnet, composed in 1819 and published posthumously in 1848, registers how a five-year-old love for Isabella Jones continues to shape perception. Sensory scenes—midnight sky, roses, budding flowers—trigger remembrance so powerfully that present pleasures are eclipsed by memory. The speaker experiences delight and grief together: remembrance sweetens joys yet turns them sorrowful, showing how past attachment persists as a organizing force of consciousness.
Read Complete AnalysesTime’s sea hath been five years at its low ebb, Long hours have to and fro let creep the sand, Since I was tangled in thy beauty’s web, And snared by the ungloving of thine hand. And yet I never look on midnight sky, But I behold thine eyes’ well-memoried light; I cannot look upon the rose’s dye, But to thy cheek my soul doth take its flight; I cannot look on any budding flower, But my fond ear, in fancy at thy lips, And hearkening for a love-sound, doth devour Its sweets in the wrong sense: — Thou dost eclipse Every delight with sweet remembering, And grief unto my darling joys dost bring.
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