Listen to:
Apostrophe to the Ocean (1:36)
by George Gordon, Lord Byron
performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode
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.
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