Torso af såret amazone, glider forover ned fra hest mod v.
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This plaster cast reproduces a fragment from an ancient sculptural group depicting a wounded Amazon slipping forward and down from her horse toward the left. The original figure is preserved only as a torso, and the cast records that partial state.
The maker of the cast is unknown, as is its date. It belongs to the collection of the SMK — National Gallery of Denmark. Plaster casts of this kind were produced from molds taken directly from surviving antique marbles, allowing accurate copies to be distributed to museums and academies for study.
Casts served as teaching tools and as substitutes for original works that could not be moved or acquired, giving students and viewers access to the forms of classical sculpture. The subject, a wounded Amazon, draws on a recurring theme in Greek art.
Background drawn from SMK — National Gallery of Denmark
Today's poem
The Past
Wilt thou forget the happy hours Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers, Heaping over their corpses cold Blossoms and leaves, instead of mould? Blossoms which were the joys that fell, And leaves, the hopes that yet remain. Forget the dead, the past? Oh, yet There are ghosts that may take revenge for it, Memories that make the heart a tomb, Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom, And with ghastly whispers tell That joy, once lost, is pain.
Percy Bysshe Shelley · Public domain
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Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) was an English poet now counted among the major figures of Romanticism, though he achieved little fame during his lifetime. A radical in both his poetry and his political and social views, he gained steady recognition after his death and influenced later poets including Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Thomas Hardy, and W. B. Yeats. Harold Bloom called him "a superb craftsman, a lyric poet without rival."
"The Past" is a short two-stanza lyric addressed to an unnamed "thou." It works through an extended metaphor in which past happy hours are figured as corpses buried under blossoms and leaves rather than earth—the blossoms standing for fallen joys, the leaves for surviving hopes.
The second stanza turns darker, warning that the dead past cannot simply be forgotten: memories, regrets, and "ghosts" return to haunt the heart, which becomes "a tomb." The poem closes on the plain, bitter conclusion that "joy, once lost, is pain."
Background drawn from PoetryDB & Wikipedia