wind;

And

steam:

here, where buzzing nations choked t ways,

And roared or murmured like a mounta stream

Dashing or winding as its torrent strays:

Here, where the Roman million's blame praise

Was death or life, the playthings of a crow My voice sounds much-and fall the star

faint rays

On the arena void-seats crushed, walls bowedAnd galleries, where my steps seem echo strangely loud.

143

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 a
peared.

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, ma have reft away.

17 Suggested by the statue of The Dying Ga once supposed to represent a dying gladiato

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.*

181

The armaments which thunderstrike the wall
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 Tra-
falgar.

182

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.

183

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, fathom-
less, alone.

184

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.

* This grammatical error, occurring in so lofty a passage, is perhaps the most famous in our literature. It is quite characteristic of Byron's negligence or indifference.

FROM DON JUAN

THE SHIPWRECK. FROM CANTO II*

38

But now there came a flash of hope once more; Day broke, and the wind lulled: the masts were gone,

All this, the most were patient, and some bold,

Until the chains and leathers were worn through

Of all our pumps: a wreck complete she rolled,

shore,

The vessel swam, yet still she held her own. They tried the pumps again, and though before Their desperate efforts seemed all useless grown,

A glimpse of sunshine set some hands to baleThe stronger pumped, the weaker thrummed1 a sail.

THE ISLES OF GREECE. FROM CANTO III*

78

Dwarfs, dancing girls, black eunuchs, and a