Lord Byron

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.

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.

The armaments which thunder-strike 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: 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.

HELPS TO STUDY.

Biographical and Historical: George Gordon Byron was born in London the year before the outbreak of the French Revolution. At the age of ten, upon the death of his grand-uncle he became Lord Byron. He traveled extensively through Europe, spending much time in Italy. At Pisa he formed a warm friendship for the poet Shelley. So deeply was he moved by his impulses toward liberty and freedom that in the summer of 1823 he left Genoa with a supply of arms, medicines, and money to aid the Greeks in their struggle for independence. In the following year he became commander-in-chief at Missolonghi, but he died of a fever before he had an opportunity to actually engage in battle. Hearing the news, the boy Tennyson, dreaming at Somersby on poetic greatness, crept away to weep and carve upon sandstone the words, "Byron is dead."

Notes and Questions.

In the first stanza why "pathless woods" and "lonely shore"?

In the second and third stanzas Byron contrasts the ocean and the earth in their relation to man.

Line 12--What two words require emphasis?

Line 13--With what is "watery plain" contrasted?

Line 14--With what is "thy" contrasted?

Line 22--What word requires emphasis?

In the fourth stanza what contrast does Byron make?

What does the fifth stanza tell? The sixth?

Which stanza do you like best? Why?

Which lines are the most beautiful?

"The Invincible Armada"--an immense Spanish fleet consisting of one hundred thirty vessels, sailed from Corunna in 1588 and attacked the English fleet but suffered defeat. This event furnished Southey the inspiration for a poem, "The Spanish Armada."

"Trafalgar"--one of Lord Nelson's great sea-fights, occurring off Cape Trafalgar on the coast of Spain in 1805. Here he defeated the combined fleets of France and Spain, but was himself killed.

Words and Phrases for Discussion.

"unknelled" "uncoffined" "unknown" "playful spray" "oak leviathans" "yeast of waves" "These are thy toys" "The Armada's pride" "spoils of Trafalgar" "rock-built" "glasses itself" "fathomless"

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