The speaker cries out to the world, to life, to time itself, feeling that he is climbing the very last steps of his existence. He looks back and trembles at the place where he once stood—a younger, brighter self that now feels impossibly remote. He asks when the glory of that prime will return, only to answer his own question with a shattered refrain: never again. What follows is a quiet, seasonless ache. Joy has simply flown away from both daylight and darkness. Even the cycle of spring freshness, summer warmth, and winter frost can no longer stir delight—only the weight of grief. The poem builds a mood of exhausted sorrow, not anger, as if the speaker has already accepted the permanent loss of whatever made life luminous. The clipped, echoing repetition of “No more—Oh, never more!” turns the whole piece into a funeral song for happiness itself.
A Lament — Summary
O world! O life! O time! On whose last steps I climb, Trembling at that where I had stood before; When will return the glory of your prime? No more--Oh, never more!
Out of the day and night A joy has taken flight; Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar, Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight No more--Oh, never more!