Farewell to North Devon — Summary

The fragment captures a speaker leaving a beloved coastline, now scarred by human tampering. There’s real bitterness in the phrase “profane and tainting hand”—people haven’t just visited, they’ve corrupted something once pristine. Shelley suggests that only a lucky few still feel the full, joyful pull of nature’s power; the rest are cut off from that “high bliss” because the landscape itself has been ruined. The mood is sorrow mixed with accusation. But then the eye lifts: “mountain piles / That load in grandeur Cambria’s emerald vales.” This sudden shift toward the massive, enduring mountains of Wales offers a kind of relief. Despair over the damaged shoreline gets answered by the sight of vast, unspoiled forms. The language becomes weighty and reverent, as if the speaker is saying farewell not just to a place, but to any hope that beauty can survive human touch—except, perhaps, in the heights we can’t so easily reach.