The second idea (verses 5-10): nature mourns his case

07The second idea (verses 5-10): nature mourns his case

Simplified explanation

• Complaining to the sea the unrest of his thoughts: he takes the sea as a friend to whom he pours out his grief, and it answers him only with its violent winds.
• Abiding on a deaf rock: he settles on a rock that does not feel, and wishes for a heart like that mute rock so that he would not feel pain.
• Waves like the waves of my sorrows: the sea's waves press upon the rock as his pains press upon his heart, and this affects his whole body.
• The sea, fluttering in its skirts, cramped with grief like my chest at evening: the sea seems to narrow with what is in it as his chest narrows at the fall of evening.
• The waste is covered with dullness: a sad brown haze lies over the land, so that it seems to have risen from his own inward parts.
• The horizon darkened, its lid wounded: the horizon is dim, as if the poet's eyelid is wounded by the grit and hardships that cover it.

Ideas drawn

• The poet's union with nature: it is the mirror of his soul.