The works, of ... lord Byron, Volume 7

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Page 76 - 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.
Page 75 - Thy waters wasted them 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.
Page 7 - I STOOD in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each hand ; I saw from out the wave her structures rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand : A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O'er the far times, when many a subject land Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles...
Page 60 - He heard it, but he heeded not— his eyes Were with his heart, and that was far away; He reck'd not of the life he lost nor prize, But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, There were his young barbarians all at play, There was their Dacian mother— he, their sire, Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday— All this rush'd with his blood— Shall he expire And unavenged? Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!
Page 7 - She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, Rising with her tiara of proud towers At airy distance, with majestic motion, A ruler of the waters and their powers...
Page 33 - The roar of waters ! — from the headlong height Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice The fall of waters ! rapid as the light The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss ; The hell of waters ! where they howl and hiss. And boil in endless torture ; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set...
Page 8 - In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, And silent rows the songless gondolier ; Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, And music meets not always now the ear : Those days are gone — but Beauty still is here. States fall, arts fade — but Nature doth not die, Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear, The pleasant place of all festivity, The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy...
Page 75 - The armaments which thunder-strike 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.
Page 36 - Lone mother of dead empires! and control In their shut breasts their petty misery. What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye!
Page 60 - He reck'd not of the life he lost nor prize, But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, There were his young barbarians all at play, There was their Dacian mother — he, their sire, Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday — All this rush'd with his blood, — Shall he expire, And unavenged ? — Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire ! CXLII.

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