"Remembrance Of Things Past"
Context: In this sonnet the poet dwells on the lamentable waste of time in his past, and this idea leads him to thoughts of his dead friends for whom he freshly grieves. But if, in the midst of these melancholy thoughts on death and loss, he can think of the friend addressed in the poem, his sorrows end and losses are as naught. The entire sonnet follows:
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear times' waste.
Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,
For precious friends hid in deaths dateless night,
And weep afresh loves' long since cancell'd woe,
And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight.
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end.
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