Sunday, May 31, 2015

Apostrophe to the Ocean


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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