Shelley paints a gorgeous scene: warm sun, dancing waves, blue isles, snowy mountains, gentle winds, and a soft city voice blending with the ocean. But the speaker sits alone, intensely aware that he cannot share the sweetness around him. He lists what he lacks—hope, health, peace, contentment, fame, power, love, even leisure—and sees others smiling, living what he cannot taste. In his exhaustion, he imagines lying down like a tired child, weeping away his life until death arrives as calmly as sleep. Yet the final stanza shifts: he suspects that when he is gone, a few might regret him, though he feels unloved now. He compares himself to this bright day that, once over, will live on in memory as pure joy. The mood is deeply melancholy but also strangely gentle; despair has become so familiar it feels almost mild, like the soft monotony of the sea.
Stanzas Written in Dejection, Near Naples — Summary
The sun is warm, the sky is clear, The waves are dancing fast and bright, Blue isles and snowy mountains wear The purple noon's transparent might, The breath of the moist earth is light, Around its unexpanded buds; Like many a voice of one delight, The winds, the birds, the ocean floods, The City's voice itself, is soft like Solitude's.
I see the Deep's untrampled floor With green and purple seaweeds strown; I see the waves upon the shore, Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown: I sit upon the sands alone,-- The lightning of the noontide ocean Is flashing round me, and a tone Arises from its measured motion, How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.
Alas! I have nor hope nor health, Nor peace within nor calm around, Nor that content surpassing wealth The sage in meditation found, And walked with inward glory crowned-- Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure. Others I see whom these surround-- Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;-- To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.
Yet now despair itself is mild, Even as the winds and waters are; I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear, Till death like sleep might steal on me, And I might feel in the warm air My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.
Some might lament that I were cold, As I, when this sweet day is gone, Which my lost heart, too soon grown old, Insults with this untimely moan; They might lament--for I am one Whom men love not,--and yet regret, Unlike this day, which, when the sun Shall on its stainless glory set, Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.