Two small paper boats, one cream and one teal, float side by side on softly rippled pale blue water.

Original artwork, not a still

A Lament

Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton

Two lives that once part are as ships that divide When, moment on moment, there rushes between The one and the other a sea; Ah, never can fall from the days that have been A gleam on the years that shall be!

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

The poem compares two people who separate to ships that sail apart while an ever-widening sea fills the space between them. It laments that the shared past cannot cast any light on the years ahead; once parted, what was between them stays behind.

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