A foggy day stirs something in the speaker that isn’t quite of the fog or of the moment — it’s a sudden, vivid dream of a particular beach. She can almost feel the wind shaping the waves into spray along the cliffs, and the pebbly shore feels impossibly close in her mind yet as unreachable as a far-off land. That opening daydream soon collapses into a raw, repetitive exhaustion: she’s sick of her current place and of elsewhere, sick of looking forward and backward, sick of everything she owns and sees, and ultimately sick of herself. A heavy, restless weariness settles over the poem — the “weary impatient patience” of someone trapped in a loop of longing and disappointment. Then, abruptly, she turns outward with a direct, almost startling question to her friends: how are you bearing it? That final line shifts the mood from solitary ache to a shared, quiet plea for connection.
Later life — Summary
Something this foggy day, a something which Is neither of this fog nor of today, Has set me dreaming of the winds that play Past certain cliffs, along one certain beach, And turn the topmost edge of waves to spray: Ah pleasant pebbly strand so far away, So out of reach while quite within my reach, As out of reach as India or Cathay! I am sick of where I am and where I am not, I am sick of foresight and of memory, I am sick of all I have and all I see, I am sick of self, and there is nothing new; Oh weary impatient patience of my lot! Thus with myself: how fares it, Friends, with you?