Shelley addresses a loved friend, Harriet, with a raw, grief-stricken voice. He insists that being forced by fate to separate from someone dear is far crueler than dying. The poem opens with fate pictured as a skeleton gripping a scepter, bending over a shuddering victim, then shifts to a wounded deer fleeing to a safe haven it will never reach. For the speaker, the outcast who must say goodbye suffers more than the dying. Even the sound of a funeral bell seems enviable compared to losing the last living tones of the beloved’s voice. Those soft, sad sounds will never leave his memory; they will echo through “the stern wreck of Nature” forever. The mood is one of intense, almost hyperbolic anguish, creating a sense that this parting is an eternal wound, deeper even than the grave.
To -- [Harriet] — Summary
Stern, stern is the voice of fate's fearful command, When accents of horror it breathes in our ear, Or compels us for aye bid adieu to the land, Where exists that loved friend to our bosom so dear,
'Tis sterner than death o'er the shuddering wretch bending, And in skeleton grasp his fell sceptre extending, Like the heart-stricken deer to that loved covert wending, Which never again to his eyes may appear--
And ah! he may envy the heart-stricken quarry, Who bids to the friend of affection farewell, He may envy the bosom so bleeding and gory, He may envy the sound of the drear passing knell,
Not so deep is his grief on his death couch reposing, When on the last vision his dim eyes are closing! As the outcast whose love-raptured senses are losing, The last tones of thy voice on the wild breeze that swell!
Those tones were so soft, and so sad, that ah! never, Can the sound cease to vibrate on Memory's ear, In the stern wreck of Nature for ever and ever, The remembrance must live of a friend so sincere.