Amateurish poetry appreciation

"The Old Familiar Faces" by Charles Lamb has seven stanzas, each with three lines. I here suggest that Lamb chose seven stanzas to reflect the passage of time by reference to the seven days of the week. Thus, the first stanza represents the first day of the week. It also talks of Lamb's early days, as one can see from the word playmates: "I have had playmates, I have had companions" The next stanza is about the next stage of life. Lamb is now with friends: "I have been laughing, I have been carousing" and it is now Tuesday and time is running out. After having friends, the next step in life is to fall in love: "I loved a Love once, fairest among women." The next part isn't so staight forward. It goes from being in love to having a great friend: "I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man." This is Thursday. After love, or rather, later in life, there is man to man friendship again, and it is more intimate than the young friendships. This was Wednesday, and it is the last day of new relationships. On Thursday, in the fifth stanza, Lamb is pacing "round the haunts of [his] childhood." He is remembering and longing, "seeking to find the old familiar faces." On Friday, we're near the end of life here, he simply laments that his bosom friend was not a member of his family, for then he would be there now, and they could talk. They would talk of what Lamb thinks to himself in the final stanza, namely, what has happened to all people they used to know: "some they have died, some they have left me/ some are taken from me; all have departed."

Each stanza ends with an elegiac line about the old familiar faces, for example, "All, all are gone, the old familiar faces." So, in each day of the week, that is, in every period of life, there is the sense that time will take what one has and it there will remain only a memory, both pleasurable and painful.

The Old Familiar Faces by Charles Lamb