But thou, of temples old, or altars new, Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled In this eternal ark of worship undefiled. Enter its grandeur overwhelms thee not; Thou movest, but increasing with the advance, Vastness which grows-but grows to harmonise— All musical in its immensities; Rich marbles-richer paintings-shrines where flame The lamps of gold-and haughty dome, which vies In air with earth's chief structures, though their frame Sits on the firm-set ground, and this the clouds must claim. Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break, To more immediate objects, and control In mighty graduations, part by part, The glory which at once upon thee did not dart. Not by its fault-but thine: our outward sense That what we have of feeling most intense Fools our fond gaze, and, greatest of the great, Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate. Then pause, and be enlighten'd; there is more Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore The fountain of sublimity displays Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can. THE OCEAN. BY BYRON. THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods, I love not Man the less, but Nature more, What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. Roll on, thou deep and dark-blue ocean-roll! He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown. His steps are not upon thy paths, thy fields For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, And dashest him again to earth :—there let him lay. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Thy shores are empires, changed in all save theeAssyria, 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 wave's playTime writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow— Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now, 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. And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy THE ENIGMA. 'Twas whisper'd in Heaven, 'twas mutter'd in Hell, And Echo caught faintly the sound as it fell; On the confines of Earth 'twas permitted to rest, And the Depths of the Ocean its presence confest; 'Tis found in the Sphere, when 'tis riven asunder'Tis seen in the Lightning and heard in the Thunder! 'Twas allotted to man with his earliest Breath, It attends at his Birth, and awaits him in DeathWithout it, the Soldier and Seaman may roam, But woe to the wretch that expels it from Home! SHELLEY.-BORN 1792; DIED 1822. THE WINTER NIGHT. How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh, That wraps this moveless scene. vault, Heaven's ebon Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills, A metaphor of peace ;-all form a scene |