On Finding a Fan
On Finding a Fan - meaning Summary
Passion's Fading and Memory
Byron meditates on lost love and the irreversibility of deep feeling. Using the metaphor of dying embers and a fan, the speaker distinguishes between small sparks that can be rekindled and a once-true passion that will not return because the heart itself has changed. The poem moves from wistful memory to sober acceptance, concluding that if warmth reappears it may flow into someone else rather than revive the original love.
Read Complete AnalysesIn one who felt as once he felt This might, perhaps, have fann’d the flame; But now his heart no more will melt, Because that heart is not the same. As when the ebbing flames are low, The aid which once improved their light, And bade them burn with fiercer glow, Now quenches all their blaze in night. Thus has it been with passion’s fires- As many a boy and girl remembers While every hope of love expires, Extinguish’d with the dying embers. The first, though not a spark survive, Some careful hand may teach to barn; The last, alas l can ne’er survive; No touch can bid its warmth reform Or, if it chance to wake again. Not always doom ‘d its heat to smother, It sheds (so wayward fates ordain) Its former warmth around another.
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