"I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom. I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients." Gustave Courbet

05 November 2017

Roll.


CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE

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.

  His steps are not upon thy paths,--thy fields
  Are not a spoil for him,--thou dost arise
  And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
  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.


Lord Byron

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