ABSTRACT
The rough draft of this poem is in Nbk 6, and there are two holograph fair copies, in Bodleian MS Shelley e. 5. and in the Pierpont Morgan Library. Both copies give the date of composition as December 1818, as do Mary S/s texts in 1824 and 1839. S. was in Naples from 1 December 1818 to 28 February 1819. Calamity of Clara's death and his reaction to Mary's own consequent depression may also have coincided with a renewed sense of the injustice and malicious distortions of public attacks on him in the Quarterly Review and elsewhere. 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,5 The breath of the moist earth 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.
