Summary
In the fourth stanza, the speaker vividly pictures his own death. Even though his waves of despair have grown “mild” on the beach, he imagines lying down on the sand like a tired child and weeping, waiting to pass away from this life the same way one gently falls asleep. He thinks of how it would feel as his cheeks grew cold in the warm ocean air, his mind fading away in the ocean’s steady, monotonous sounds.
Then, in the last stanza, the speaker links his thoughts of death with the day’s eventual passing. If he were to die, a few people would miss him; however, as he feels mostly unloved, their regret would quickly pass. Ultimately, he comes to the conclusion that this afternoon would be more fondly remembered than he himself; he has insulted its beauty with his despair. Ending on the anticipated joyful memory of Naples’ coast, the speaker finds a cause for hope in the midst of his dejection.
Analysis
The speaker’s outpouring of emotion in stanza three levels off in stanza four. His despair is less intense, and in this brief reprieve, his thoughts turn to death. The picture he creates is oddly peaceful: he imagines his body on the shore, child-like and at ease, sleeping blissfully as the waves push and pull against the sand. Like the language and imagery of the previous stanzas, these lines help us grasp the intensity of the speaker’s pain, as death is the only idea that brings him genuine comfort. It also helps us understand his loneliness.
In stanza five, the speaker introduces a complex analogy in which the emotions and themes of the poem come together in something of a climax. Building off the previous stanza, he imagines the sadness others would feel if he actually passed away. However, because most people don’t like him very much, he, thinks, he would not be remembered happily. For the few who would miss him, his memory would be short-lived. On the other hand, the beautiful day he witnessed would be remembered longer and more fondly. He feels guilty for tarnishing its “stainless glory” with his depression and, anticipating the sunset, briefly feels that all is not lost. Ending on the word “yet,” the speaker subtly gestures to the idea of endurance, foreshadowing his persistence in spite of, and against, his dejection.
Ultimately, Stanzas in Dejection uses the natural world to both express and mirror the speaker’s despair. His emotional highs and lows reflect the crests and crashes of the waves. His physical size compared to the magnitude of the natural wonders around him echoes the way he feels at the center of his incalculable despair.
In the same manner as the previous stanzas, the alexandrine in the final line of each stanza gives the speaker a little extra room to work through his emotional state. The extra beat at the end emphasizes the disharmony the speaker's dejection creates between him and the outside world. However, in the poem's last line, the extra syllable mirrors the speaker's thought that the day will "linger" in his memory as a cause for hope.
