FROM "CHILDE HAROLD."
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.
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.
It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies, Or like a cradled creature lies.
I'm on the sea, I 'm on the sea,
I am where I would ever be,
With the blue above and the blue below, And silence wheresoe'er I go.
If a storm should come and awake the deep, What matter? I shall ride and sleep.
I love, O, how I love to ride
On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide, Where every mad wave drowns the moon, And whistles aloft its tempest tune, And tells how goeth the world below, And why the southwest wind doth blow! I never was on the dull, tame shore But I loved the great sea more and more, And backward flew to her billowy breast, Like a bird that seeketh her mother's nest, - And a mother she was and is to me, For I was born on the open sea.
The waves were white, and red the morn, In the noisy hour when I was born;
The whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled, And the dolphins bared their backs of gold; And never was heard such an outcry wild, As welcomed to life the ocean child.
I have lived since then, in calm and strife, Full fifty summers a rover's life, With wealth to spend, and a power to range, But never have sought or sighed for change : And death, whenever he comes to me, Shall come on the wide, unbounded sea!
THE sea is mighty, but a mightier sways His restless billows. Thou, whose hands have
In acclamation. I behold the ships Gliding from cape to cape, from isle to isle, Or stemming toward far lands, or hastening home
From the Old World. It is thy friendly breeze That bears them, with the riches of the land, And treasure of dear lives, till, in the port, The shouting seaman climbs and furls the sail.
But who shall bide thy tempest, who shall face
The blast that wakes the fury of the sea? O God! thy justice makes the world turn pale, When on the armed fleet, that royally Bears down the surges, carrying war, to smite Some city or invade some thoughtless realm, Descends the fierce tornado. The vast hulks Are whirled like chaff upon the waves; the
Fly, rent like webs of gossamer; the masts Are snapped asunder; downward from the decks Downward are slung, into the fathomless gulf, Their cruel engines; and their hosts, arrayed In trappings of the battle-field, are whelmed By whirlpools or dashed dead upon the rocks. Then stand the nations still with awe, and pause
A moment from the bloody work of war.
These restless surges eat away the shores Of earth's old continents; the fertile plain Welters in shallows, headlands crumble down, And the tide drifts the sea-sand in the streets Of the drowned city. Thou, meanwhile, afar In the green chambers of the middle sea, Where broadest spread the waters and the line Sinks deepest, while no eye beholds thy work, Creator! thou dost teach the coral worm To lay his mighty reefs. From age to age, He builds beneath the waters, till, at last, His bulwarks overtop the brine, and check The long wave rolling from the southern pole To break upon Japan. Thou bid'st the fires,
His boundless gulfs and built his shore, thy That smoulder under ocean, heave on high
breath, That moved in the beginning o'er his face, Moves o'er it evermore. The obedient waves To its strong motion roll, and rise and fall. Still from that realm of rain thy cloud goes up, As at the first, to water the great earth, And keep her valleys green. A hundred realms Watch its broad shadow warping on the wind, And in the dropping shower with gladness hear Thy promise of the harvest. I look forth Over the boundless blue, where joyously The bright crests of innumerable waves Glance to the sun at once, as when the hands Of a great multitude are upward flung
The new-made mountains, and uplift their peaks, A place of refuge for the storm-driven bird. The birds and wafting billows plant the rifts With herb and tree; sweet fountains gush; sweet airs
Ripple the living lakes that, fringed with flow
Are gathered in the hollows. Thou dost look On thy creation and pronounce it good. Its valleys, glorious with their summer green, Praise thee in silent beauty; and its woods Swept by the murmuring winds of ocean, join The murmuring shores in a perpetual hymn.
BEAUTIFUL, sublime, and glorious; Mild, majestic, foaming, free,
Over time itself victorious, Image of eternity!
Sun and moon and stars shine o'er thee, See thy surface ebb and flow, Yet attempt not to explore thee In thy soundless depths below.
Whether morning's splendors steep thee With the rainbow's glowing grace, Tempests rouse, or navies sweep thee, 'T is but for a moment's space.
Earth, her valleys and her mountains, Mortal man's behests obey; The unfathomable fountains
Scoff his search and scorn his sway.
Such art thou, stupendous ocean! But, if overwhelmed by thee, Can we think, without emotion, What must thy Creator be?
O gardens of Eden! in vain Placed far on the fathomless main, Where Nature with Innocence dwelt in her youth, When pure was her heart and unbroken her truth.
But now the fair rivers of Paradise wind Through countries and kingdoms o'erthrown; Where the giant of tyranny crushes mankind, Where he reigns, and will soon reign alone; Forwide and more wide, o'er the sunbeaming zone He stretches his hundred-fold arms, Despoiling, destroying its charms; Beneath his broad footstep the Ganges is dry, And the mountains recoil from the flash of his eye.
Thus the pestilent Upas, the demon of trees, Its boughs o'er the wilderness spreads, And with livid contagion polluting the breeze, Its mildewing influence sheds ;
The birdson the wing, and the flowers in their beds, Are slain by its venomous breath, That darkens the noonday with death, And pale ghosts of travellers wander around, While their mouldering skeletons whiten the
Now dark with the fresh-blowing gale,
To ravage the uttermost earth,
While soft o'er thy bosom the cloud-shadows sail, There are, gloomy Ocean, a brotherless clan,
And the silver-winged sea-fowl on high,
Like meteors bespangle the sky,
Or dive in the gulf, or triumphantly ride,
Like foam on the surges, the swans of the tide.
From the tumult and smoke of the city set free, With eager and awful delight, From the crest of the mountain I gaze upon thee,
I gaze, and am changed at the sight; For mine eye is illumined, my genius takes flight, My soul, like the sun, with a glance Embraces the boundless expanse,
And moves on thy waters, wherever they roll, From the day-darting zone to the night-shadowed
Who traverse thy banishing waves, The poor disinherited outcasts of man,
My spirit descends where the day-spring is born, Where the billows are rubies on fire,
Where Europe exultingly drains
Where man rules o'er man with a merciless rod,
And the breezes that rock the light cradle of morn | The life-blood from Africa's veins;
Are sweet as the Phenix's pyre.
O regions of beauty, of love and desire !
And spurns at his footstool the image of God!
The hour is approaching, - a terrible hour! And Vengeance is benling her bow ; Already the clouds of the hurricane lower, And the rock-rending whirlwinds blow; Bak rolls the huge Ocean, hell opens below; The floods return headlong, they sweep The slave-cultured lands to the deep,
In a moment entombed in the horriole void, By their Maker himself in his anger destroyed.
Shall this be the fate of the cane-planted isles, More lovely than clouds in the west, When the sun o'er the ocean descending in smiles, Sinks softly and sweetly to rest!
No-Father of mercy befriend the opprest; At the voice of thy gospel of peace May the sorrows of Africa cease ; And slave and his master devoutly unite
To walk in thy freedom and dwell in thy light!
As homeward my weary-winged Fancy extends Her star-lighted course through the skies, High over the mighty Atlantic ascends,
And turns upon Europe her eyes :
Ah me what new prospects, new horrors arise? Thou thing that windest round the soil w...! I see the war-tempested flood
All foaming, and panting with blood; The panic-struck Owan in agony roars, Rebounds from the battle, and flies to his shores.
For Britannia is wielding the trident to-day, Consuming her foes in her ire,
And hurling her thunder with absolute sway From her wave-ruling chariots of fire.
Like a huge animal, which, downward Lτος From the black clouds, lies weltering an is. Lashing and writhing till its strength b Thy voice is like the thunder, and thy s Is as a giant's slumber, loud and deep. Thou speakest in the east and in the west At once, and on thy heavily laden breast Fleets come and go, and shapes that havi Or motion, yet are moved and meet in st.
She triumphs; the winds and the waters con- The earth has naught of this nochan
To spread her invincible name ;
The universe rings with her fame ;
But the cries of the fatherless mix with her praise,
And the tears of the widow are shed on her bays.
O Britain, dear Britain' the land of my birth; O Isle most enchantingly fair!
Thou Pearl of the Ocean' thou Gem of the Earth! O my Mother, my Mother, beware,
For wealth is a phantom, and empire a snare! O, let not thy birthright be sold
For reprobate glory and gold !
Thy distant dominions like wild graftings shoot, They weigh down thy trunk, they will tear up
Ruffles its surface, and no spirits dare Give answer to the tempest-wakened air, But o'er its wastes the weakly tenants TAI At will, and wound its bosom as they gi Ever the same, it hath no ebb, no flow But in their stated rounds the wants And pass like visions to their wontest hot And come again, and vanish; the young bring Looks ever bright with leaves and b
And Winter always winds his sullen hen, When the wild Autumn, with a look for, ora, Dies in his stormy manhood; and the sk Weep, and flowers sicken, when the summerfa O, wonderful thou art, great element, And fearful in thy spleeny humors bent, And lovely in repose! thy summer form Is beautiful, and when the silver waves Make music in earth's dark and wirling ave
The root of thine oak, O my country! that I love to wander on thy pebbled beach, Rock-planted and flourishing free;
Marking the sunlight at the evening hour, And hearken to the thoughts thy waters tra, -
Its branches are stretched o'er the uttermost lands, Eternity - Eternity and Power And its shadow eclipses the sea.
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