Shelley is speaking to his young son, William, who has died. He fixes on fleeting, physical memories: the sound of small feet on a distant beach, the bright fluttering of baby hands. Then comes a brutal turn. “Where now the worm will feed no more” means the child’s hands are still forever — the decay of the grave has already finished its work, leaving only a hollow absence. The image is shockingly direct, yet the tone stays quiet and intimate.
The poem pivots again to a remembered glance, when the child looked back at his parents with a face full of love and playful delight. That single, interrupted final line hangs in the air, as if the speaker can’t bring himself to finish. The mood is deeply tender and sorrowful, not loud with rage but hushed by loss. Every careful detail makes the absence feel immense, like a shoreline where footsteps once marked the sand and then the tide swept them clean.