CLXXII.

These might have been her destiny; but no,
Our hearts deny it: and so young, so fair,
Good without effort, great without a foe;
But now a bride and mother—and now there!
ties did that stern moment tear!

How

many

From thy Sire's to his humblest subject's breast

It linked the electric chain of that despair,

Whose shock was as an earthquake's, and opprest

The land which loved thee so, that none could love thee b.
CLXXIII,

66. Lo, Nemi! navelled in the woody hills
So far, that the uprooting wind which tears
The oak from his foundation, and which spills

The ocean o'er its boundary, and bears
Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares
The oval mirror of thy glassy lake;

And, calm as cherish'd hate, its surface wears

A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake,
All coiled into itself, and round, as sleeps the snake.
CLXXIV.

And near Albano's scarce divided waves

Shine from a sister valley;—and afar

2

The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves
The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war
« Arms and the Man, » whose re-ascending star
Rose o'er an empire ;-but beneath thy right

Tully reposed from Rome;-and where yon bar
Of girnling mountains intercepts the sit

The Sabine farm was till'd, the weary bard's delight. 67

CLXXV.

But I forgot. My pilgrim's shrine is won,
And he and I must part,-so let is be,—

His task and mine alike are nearly done;

Yet once more

let us look upon the sea;

The midland ocean breaks on him and me

And from the Alban Mount we now behold

Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we

Beheld it last by Calpe's rock unfold

Those waves,

we followed

CLXXVI,

Upon the blue Symplegades : long years

Long, though not very many, since have done
Their work on both; some suffering and some tears

Have left us nearly where we had begun :
Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run,

We have had our reward-and it is here;
That we can yet feel gladden'd by the sun,
And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear
As if there were no man,
to trouble what is clear,

CLXXVII.

Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling place

With one fair Spirit for my minister

2

That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her!
Ye Elements !-in whose ennobling stir

I feel myself exalted-Can ye not
Accord me such a being, Do I err

In deeming such inhabit many a spot?

Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot,

CLXXVIII.

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 can not all conceal.

CLXXIX.

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, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown,

CLXXX.

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

CLXXXI.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls

Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,

The oak liviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take

Of Lord of thee, and arbiter of war;

which mar

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, 'Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of TRAFALGAR,

CLXXXII.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee-
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?

Thy waters wasted them while they we free,

And many a tyrant since; their shores obey their decay

The stranger, slave, or savage;

Has dried

up realms to deserts:-not so thou, Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play

Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure browSuch as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now

CLXXXIII.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests, in tempests in all time, Calm or convuls'd-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.

CLXXXIV.

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,