THE OCEAN

FROM Childe Harold, Canto IV

CLXXVIII

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

CLXXIX

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean- roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin his control

Stops with the shore; - upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,

When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

CLXXX

His steps are not upon thy paths

thy fields

Are not a spoil for him- thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields

For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,

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.

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
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, 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.

CLXXXIII

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

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.

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 wanton'd with thy breakers — they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror 't was a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,

And trusted to thy billows far and near,

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

George Gordon Byron

AVE MARIA

FROM Don Juan, Canto III

CII

Ave Maria! blessèd be the hour!

The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft
Have felt that moment in its fullest power

Sink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft-
While swung the deep bell in the distant tower,
Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft,

And not a breath crept through the rosy air,

And yet the forest leaves seemed stirred with prayer.

CIII

Ave Maria! 't is the hour of prayer!

Ave Maria! 't is the hour of love! Ave Maria! may our spirits dare

Look up to thine and to thy Son's above! Ave Maria! oh that face so fair!

Those downcast eyes beneath the Almighty doveWhat though 't is but a pictured image? — strikeThat painting is no idol, — 't is too like.

CV

Sweet hour of twilight! — in the solitude
Of the pine forest, and the silent shore
Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood,
Rooted where once the Adrian wave flowed o'er,
To where the last Cæsarean fortress stood,
Evergreen forest! which Boccaccio's lore
And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me,
How have I loved the twilight hour and thee!

CVII

Oh, Hesperus! thou bringest all good things
Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer,
To the young bird the parent's brooding wings,
The welcome stall to the o'erlabored steer;
Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings,
Whate'er our household gods protect of dear,

Are gathered round us by thy look of rest;

Thou bring'st the child, too, to the mother's breast.

CVIII

Soft hour! which makes the wish and melts the heart Of those who sail the seas, on the first day

When they from their sweet friends are torn apart
Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way
As the far bell of vesper makes him start,

Seeming to weep the dying day's decay; Is this a fancy which our reason scorns? Ah! surely nothing dies but something mourns! - George Gordon Byron

THE COLISEUM

FROM Manfred, Act III

The stars are forth, the moon above the tops
Of the snow-shining mountains. - Beautiful!
I linger yet with Nature, for the night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness,

I learned the language of another world.
I do remember me, that in my youth,
When I was wandering, upon such a night
I stood within the Coliseum's wall,
'Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome;
The trees which grew along the broken arches
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar
The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber: and,
More near, from out the Cæsars' palace came
The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly,
Of distant sentinels the fitful song
Begun and died upon the gentle wind.
Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach