284

THE

THE OCEAN1

HERE 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.

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.

1 From the fourth canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.

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 wrinkles 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
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers, they to me

Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror, 'twas 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.

Lord Byron

285

AR

THE COLISEUM

ROME 1

RCHES on arches! as it were that Rome,
Collecting the chief trophies of her line,
Would build up all her triumphs in one dome,
Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine
As 'twere its natural torches, for divine
Should be the light which streams here, to illume
This long-explored but still exhaustless mine
Of contemplation; and the azure gloom

Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume

Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven,
Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument,
And shadows forth its glory. There is given
Unto the things of earth which Time hath bent
A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant

His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power
And magic in the ruined battlement,

For which the palace of the present hour

Must yield its pomp and wait till ages are its dower.

And here the buzz of eager nations ran,
In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause,

1 From the fourth canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. following the second stanza, is omitted.

A digression,

As man was slaughtered by his fellowman.
And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but because
Such were the bloody Circus' genial laws,
And the imperial pleasure.-Wherefore not?
What matters where we fall to fill the maws
Of worms, on battle-plains or listed spot?
Both are but theaters where the chief actors rot.

I see before me the Gladiator lie:

He leans upon his hand,his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,

And his drooped head sinks gradually low,-
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,

Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now

The arena swims around him, he is gone,

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who

won.

He heard it, but he heeded not,-his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away.
He recked not of the life he lost nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother,—he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday!—

All this rushed with his blood.-Shall he expire
And unavenged?-Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire!

But here, where Murder breathed her bloody steam;
And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways,
And roared or murmured like a mountain stream
Dashing or winding as its torrent strays;
Here, where the Roman millions' blame or praise
Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd,

My voice sounds much,—and fall the stars' faint rays On the arena void-seats crushed-walls bowedAnd galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud.

A ruin, yet what ruin! From its mass

Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,

And marvel where the spoil could have appeared.
Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared?
Alas! developed, opens the decay,

When the colossal fabric's form is neared:

It will not bear the brightness of the day,

Which streams too much on all years, man, have reft away.

But when the rising moon begins to climb

Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;

When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,
And the low night-breeze waves along the air
The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear,
Like laurels on the bald first Cæsar's head;
When the light shines serene, but doth not glare,—
Then in this magic circle raise the dead:

Heroes have trod this spot, 'tis on their dust ye tread.

"While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;

When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;

And when Rome falls-the World." From our own land

Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall
In Saxon times, which we are wont to call
Ancient; and these three mortal things are still
On their foundations, and unaltered all;
Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill,

The World, the same wide den-of thieves, or what ye will.

Lord Byron