# Return explained — Poetry

> Chapter companion for Poetry by Georgia Douglas Johnson.

## What happens

The speaker's thoughts return to a past love, now lost, and they reflect on the remnants of that love as a ghostly, fragmented banquet.

## Themes in this chapter

### Love and Loss

The poem centers on the return to a lost love, symbolized by an ancient tomb and shattered cup.

### The Passing of Time and Mortality

The imagery of an ancient tomb and ghostly remnants underscores the passage of time and the mortality of love.

## Character check-ins

### Unknown

The speaker whose errant thoughts return to love's ancient tomb.

### Life

Implied presence as the love that has passed, leaving only fragments.

## Key lines

> Return Now, Like the pines intoning Though some solitary gloom, My errant throughts go pattering About love’s ancient tomb

Come back now, as the pines sing in a lonely darkness, my wandering thoughts scatter around the old grave of love.

_The speaker calls for a return to a past love, now dead and buried._

> A banquet weird, the fragments Where the ghost of love May sup.

A strange feast of broken pieces where the spirit of love might dine.

_The remnants of love are like a ghostly meal, suggesting only echoes remain._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_9_se/chapters/return
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_9_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_9_se/chapters