English Poetry | Count That Day Lost by George Eliot | GrammatiX

“Count That Day Lost,” by the English writer George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans), is a lyric poem consisting of two stanzas and offering straightforward moral advice of the sort often associated with literature of the Victorian period.

Unlike the titles of many works, the title of this poem is absolutely integral to the poem’s meaning, effects, and effectiveness. The title immediately creates suspense. What day (we wonder) does the title imply? In what ways will that unidentified day be “lost”? Answers to these questions are postponed until the very end of the poem, where the text achieves a final ironic symmetry. The poem’s last line (in other words) clearly echoes its title, but in a memorably different way than we may have expected.

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