- The narrator quotes from Shakespeare's Cymbeline. There's a lot of quoting in this story.
- Narrator says he's moved out to the country, to a house without a piazza, or porch.
- The lack of a piazza makes him sad.
- Yes, that's an important plot point. The house has no porch—conflict!
- This is not a two-fisted, pulse-pounding tale, in case you couldn't tell already.
- The house is old; it's got a big elm tree by it.
- You can also see Mount Greylock from the house, the highest peak in Massachusetts, (which you could see from Melville's real-life house at Arrowhead.)
- The narrator compares Greylock to the ancient King Charlemagne, because that's the sort of labored, cutesy narrator you've got here.
- Three paragraphs in, Shmoop doesn't know the narrator's name, but still, Shmoop would like to never know his name and never hear from him again.
- Narrator decides to build a piazza. He wonders which side of the house to put it on. He hems and haws, but eventually decides on the north, so he can see Mount Greylock.
- Folks laugh at the narrator for building a porch to the north, since that isn't usually where you put a porch. But the narrator is unconventional. Good for him.
- Sitting on his porch reminds him of the sea, because Melville went to sea, and is famous for his sea tales. So this bit is kind of a branding exercise; he's letting readers know that they haven't wandered into the wrong restaurant.
- At some point in his sitting on the porch, he spies a spot that interests him.
- He tries looking at it over a year or so, but can never really pin it down.
- What could it be? He's reading Midsummer's Night Dream, so it must be something fanciful and filled with fairy dust.
- Fairy dust…ah…ah…choooo!
- Excuse Shmoop.
- The narrator is somewhat ill too, it sounds like. Not clear if he's sneezing though.
- But despite illness he decides to set off for fairy land.
- He fights Harry Potter in a duel to the death.
- No, not really.
- But somehow or other he gets to a pasture, and comes to a house.
- He finds a girl named Marianna sewing at a window.
- She lives with her brother, who is out most of the day, and so she is very lonely.
- She can see the narrator's house from her window, and thinks whoever lives there must be happy.
- That's irony, folks, because the narrator is melancholy too.
- They talk about a passing cloud. Then they talk about the cloud some more. Not much happening in a story when you need to spend a page talking about a cloud.
- The cloud's shadow looks like a dog. True story.
- More talk about clouds, more Marianna being sad and lonely.
- She wishes she could see whoever it is who lives in the house.
- The narrator tells her he wishes he were the inhabitant of that happy house.
- But then he's back at his piazza, and you realize the whole conversation with Marianns was a vain fancy.
- Some people imagine unicorns and flying and explosions and exciting things when they daydream. The narrator just imagines some lonely person far off who watches clouds.
- She haunts him with her unreal reality.
- That's it. Yes, it's a whole story about sitting on a porch looking out while imagining someone else sitting by a window looking at you. And ocassionally talking about clouds.
- The next story's better, Shmoop promises.