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 thunderstrike the walls Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Apostropbe to the Ocean Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafal gar. 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 Unchangeable save to thy 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 I trusted to thy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane as I do here. In August of 1823 Byron sailed for Greece. He had become deeply interested in the Greeks and thought to assist them in gaining their freedom. He was received with enthusiasm and he hoped to do something more than he had accomplished in literature, which he then seemed to think was not his profession. But in April of the next year he contracted a fever from exposure in a heavy storm and died ten days later. The Greeks would have buried him with honor but his body was finally embalmed and taken to England, |