Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples
1 The sun is warm,
the sky is clear,
2 The waves are
dancing fast and bright,
3 Blue isles and snowy mountains
wear
4 The purple noon's transparent
might,
5 The breath of the
moist earth is light,
6 Around its unexpanded
buds;
7 Like many a voice
of one delight,
8 The winds, the birds, the ocean
floods,
9The City's voice itself, is soft like
Solitude's.
10 I see the Deep's
untrampled floor
11 With green and
purple seaweeds strown;
12 I see the waves upon the
shore,
13 Like light dissolved in
star-showers, thrown:
14 I sit upon the
sands alone,--
15 The lightning of the noontide
ocean
16 Is flashing round
me, and a tone
17 Arises from its measured
motion,
18How sweet! did any heart now share in my
emotion.
19 Alas! I have nor
hope nor health,
20 Nor peace within
nor calm around,
21 Nor that content surpassing
wealth
22 The sage in meditation
found,
23 And walked with
inward glory crowned--
24 Nor fame, nor power, nor love,
nor leisure.
25 Others I see whom
these surround--
26 Smiling they live, and call
life pleasure;
27To me that cup has been dealt in another
measure.
28 Yet now despair
itself is mild,
29 Even as the winds
and waters are;
30 I could lie down like a tired
child,
31 And weep away the life of
care
32 Which I have borne
and yet must bear,
33 Till death like sleep might
steal on me,
34 And I might feel
in the warm air
35 My cheek grow cold, and hear
the sea
36Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.
37 Some might lament
that I were cold,
38 As I, when this
sweet day is gone,
39 Which my lost heart, too soon
grown old,
40 Insults with this untimely
moan;
41 They might
lament--for I am one
42 Whom men love not,--and yet
regret,
43 Unlike this day,
which, when the sun
44 Shall on its stainless glory
set,
45Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory
yet.
Online text
copyright © 2003, Ian Lancashire for the Department of English, University of
Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology
Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original
text: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Posthumous Poems, ed. Mary Shelley
(1824). Cf. Posthumous Poems of Shelley. Mary Shelley's Fair Copy Book,
Bodleian MS. Shelley Adds. d. 9, Collated with the Holographs and the Printed
Texts, ed. Irving Massey (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1969).
PR 5403 M27 ROBA.
First publication date: 1824
RPO poem
editor: J. D. Robins
RP edition: 2RP 2.249.
Recent
editing: 4:2002/5/20
Form:
Spenserian Stanzas
Rhyme: ababbcbcc
Other poems by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
