Stanzas Written in Dejection near Naples by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Part 1 of 3.

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 light:
The breath of the moist air 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 sea-weeds 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!