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, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown. CLXXX. His steps are not upon thy paths, thy fields 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, CLXXXI. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, VOL. I. 18 CLXXXII. Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee— Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wasted them 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' playTime 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 Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm, 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 CLXXXV. My task is done my song hath ceased—my theme The spell should break of this protracted dream. Which in my spirit dwelt, is fluttering, faint, and low. CLXXXVI. Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been- He wore his sandal-shoon and scallop-shell; NOTES TO CANTO IV. Note 1, page 213, stanza 1. I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; The communication between the ducal palace and the prisons of Venice is by a gloomy bridge, or covered gallery, high above the water, and divided by a stone wall into a passage and a cell. The state dungeons, called « pozzi,» or wells, were sunk in the thick walls of the palace; and the prisoner, when taken out to die, was conducted across the gallery to the other side, and being then led back into the other compartment, or cell, upon the bridge, was there strangled. The low portal through which the criminal was taken into this cell is now walled up; but the passage is still open, and is still known by the name of the Bridge of Sighs. The pozzi are under the flooring of the chamber at the foot of the bridge. They were formerly twelve, but on the first arrival of the French, the Venetians hastily blocked or broke up the deeper of these dungeons. You may still, however, descend by a trap-door, and crawl down through holes, half-choked by rubbish, to the depth of two stories below the first range. If you are in want of consolation for the extinction of patrician power, perhaps you may find it there; scarcely a ray of light glimmers into the narrow gallery which leads to the cells, and the places of confinement themselves are totally dark. A small hole in the wall admitted the damp air of the passages, and served for the mtroduction of the prisoner's food. A wooden pallet, raised a foot from the ground, was |