A Song of Despair Memory and the Past Quotes

The whole poem begins with the figure of the memory rising up out of the darkness. Opening this way lets us know that memory will be an important theme throughout the poem.

Time is compared to the sea in these lines, because it can swallow up every single thing, like love affairs or happy times.

These lines give us the exact coordinates of the memory that the speaker mentions in the first line: it was a time when he was wildly happy with his lover. Sadly, that didn't last.