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. 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. 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 [From Childe Harold.] CALM AND TEMPEST AT NIGHT ON LAKE LEMAN (GENEVA). CLEAR, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake, With the wide world I dwelt in is a thing Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake spring. Earth's troubled waters for a purer This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing To waft me from distraction; once I loved Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved, Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou That I with stern delights should e'er rollest now. have been so moved. |