Melancolía mediterránea

[Shelley escribió este poema en diciembre de 1818.

Tres años y medio después se ahogó frente a la costa de La Spezia.

En este mismo mar. La foto es de Cabo Tiñoso, Murcia.]

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 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 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.
Some might lament that I were cold,

As I, when this sweet day is done,

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.
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.

-

[Percy B. Shelley, "Stanzas Written in Dejection near Naples"]

.

[Costa de Cartagena desde el Fuerte de Cabo Tiñoso.

Así lo vió Aníbal (o casi, sobra la refinería de Repsol al fondo)]