Thursday 21 August 2014

chương 07 Byron Childe Harold's Pilgrimage




George Gordon, Lord Byron, an excerpt from "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" [Canto Four, Stanzas 178-186]
CLXXVIII.

   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.


CLXXIX.

   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.

CLXXX.

   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.

CLXXXI.

   The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
   Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
   And monarchs tremble in their capitals.
   The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
   Their clay creator the vain title take
   Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;
   These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
   They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada’s pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

CLXXXII.

   Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee —
   Assyria, 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.

CLXXXIII.

   Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty’s form
   Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
   Calm or convulsed — in breeze, or gale, or storm,
   Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
   Dark-heaving; — boundless, endless, and sublime —
   The image of Eternity — the throne
   Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
   The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee: thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

CLXXXIV.

   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.

CLXXXV.

   My task is done — my song hath ceased — my theme
   Has died into an echo; it is fit
   The spell should break of this protracted dream.
   The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit
   My midnight lamp — and what is writ, is writ —
   Would it were worthier! but I am not now
   That which I have been — and my visions flit
   Less palpably before me — and the glow
Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low.

CLXXXVI.

   Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been —
   A sound which makes us linger; yet, farewell!
   Ye, who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene
   Which is his last, if in your memories dwell
   A thought which once was his, if on ye swell
   A single recollection, not in vain
   He wore his sandal-shoon and scallop shell;
   Farewell! with him alone may rest the pain,
If such there were — with you, the moral of his strain.


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