And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields

For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,

1615

Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies

His petty hope in some near port or bay,

And dashest him again to earth: - there let him lay.

1620

CLXXXI.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls

Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,

The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take

1625

Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war-
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar.

CLXXXII.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee—
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters washed them power while they were free,

1630

And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts:—not so thou; –
Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play,
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow:
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

1635

CLXXXIII.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form

Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,—

1640

Calm or convulsed, in breeze, or gale, or storm,

Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark-heaving-boundless, endless, and sublime,
The image of eternity, the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

1645

CLXXXIV.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,

1650

1655

And laid my hand upon thy mane—as I do here.

CLXXXV.

My task is done, my song hath ceased, my theme
Has died into an echo; it is fit

The spell should break of this protracted dream.
The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit
My midnight lamp-and what is writ, is writ;
Would it were worthier! but I am not now
That which I have been-and my visions flit
Less palpably before me-and the glow

Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low.

CLXXXVI.

Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been—
A sound which makes us linger;-yet-farewell!

1660

1665

Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell

A thought which once was his, if on ye swell
A single recollection, not in vain

1670

He wore his sandal shoon and scallop shell;

Farewell! with him alone may rest the pain,

If such there were-with you, the moral of his strain.

SONG OF THE GREEK BARD.

FROM THE THIRD CANTO OF "DON JUAN."

I.

THE isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho1 loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos 2 rose, and Phoebus 2 sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,

But all, except their sun, is set.

5

2.

The Scian and the Teian 4 muse,
The hero's harp, the lover's lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse:

Their place of birth alone is mute

10

1 A Greek poetess who was in the zenith of her fame about B.C. 600. "The glory of Lesbos (Mitylene) was that Sappho was its citizen, and its chief fame centers in the fact of her celebrity." The poet Swinburne calls Sappho

"Love's priestess, mad with pain and joy of song,

Song's priestess, mad with joy and pain of love."

2 An island fabled to have been raised from the sea by Neptune for Latona, mother of the twin children Apollo (Phoebus) and Diana, born on Delos. 3 Homer, born at Scio.

4 Anacreon, born on the isle of Teos.

3

4.

A king sate on the rocky brow

Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis ;4

And ships, by thousands, lay below,

And men in nations; —all were his!
He counted them at break of day-
And when the sun set where were they?

5.

20

And where are they? and where art thou,

25

My country? On thy voiceless shore

The heroic lay is tuneless now—

The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?

30

1 “The vñooɩ μakáρwv of the Greek poets were supposed to have been the Cape Verde Islands or the Canaries " (BYRON).

2 In Attica, -the scene of one of the world's decisive battles. Here, in B.C. 490, 11,000 Greeks under Miltiades defeated 100,000 Persians. On this and the other historic events mentioned in the poem, consult some good Greek history.

3 Xerxes, king of the Persians.

4 An island of ancient Greece, opposite Athens, -the scene of the famous victory over the Persians by the Greek fleet under Themistocles, B. C. 480.