The Sea

 

 

 

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.

 

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.