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.