A reference to Charles Lamb's haunting personal poem about nostalgia for an unreachable
past and the harsh costs of experience, "The Old Familiar Faces" (1798). Lamb was
a close friend and coadjutor of Mary Shelley's father William Godwin: the details
of his poem recall his mother's murder and Lamb's sense of distance from various friends,
probably Charles Lloyd in the first reference and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the second.
Where are they gone, the old familiar faces?
I had a mother, but she died, and left me,
Died prematurely in a day of horrors—
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I have had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days—
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies—
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I loved a Love once, fairest among women.
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her—
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man:
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.
Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood.
Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse,
Seeking to find the old familiar faces.
Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling?
So might we talk of the old familiar faces—
How some they have died, and some they have left me,
And some are taken from me; all are departed;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.