The poem was published as "To---" in 1824 under Miscellaneous Poems in two stanzas of four couplets each containing four lines in Posthumous Poems.
The theme of the poem is the endurance of the memories of events and of sensations.[4]
Mary Shelley edited the poems and wrote the preface to the collection. She described the poems: "Many of the Miscellaneous Poems, written on the spur of the occasion, and never retouched, I found among his manuscript books, and have carefully copied: I have subjoined, whenever I have been able, the date of their composition."[5][6][7][8]