h. THE OCEAN TO THE OCEAN LORD BYRON From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage 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 groanWithout a grave, unknelled, uncoffined and unknown. - His steps are not upon thy paths, thy fields And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And dashest him again to earth; there let him lay. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, Thy shores are empires, changed in all save theeAssyria, 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. Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Calm or convulsed, in breeze or gale or storm, Dark-heaving-boundless, endless and sublime, Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime And trusted to thy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here. THE OCEAN PSALM CVII, 23-33 From Moulton's Modern Readers' Bible They that go down to the sea in ships, That do business in great waters; These see the works of the Lord, And his wonders in the deep. For he commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind, They mount up to heaven, They go down again to the depths: Their soul melteth because of trouble. And stagger like a drunken man, And are at their wit's end. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, So that the waves thereof are still. Then they are glad because they be quiet; So he bringeth them unto the haven where they would be. ROCKED IN THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP Rocked in the cradle of the deep For thou, O Lord, hast power to save. I know thou wilt not slight my call, For thou dost mark the sparrow's fall; When in the dead of night I lie |