His task and mine alike are nearly done;
Yet once more let us look upon the sea:
The midland ocean breaks on him and me,
And from the Alban Mount we now behold

Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we
Beheld it last by Calpe's rock unfold

Those waves, we follow'd on till the dark Euxine roll'd

CLXXVI

Upon the blue Symplegades: long years Long, though not very many since have done Their work on both; some suffering and some tears Have left us nearly where we had begun: Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run, We have had our reward — and it is here; That we can yet feel gladden'd by the sun, And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear As if there were no man to trouble what is clear.

CLXXVII

Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling place

With one fair Spirit for my minister,

That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her!
Ye Elements!

- in whose ennobling stir

I feel myself exalted can ye not

Accord me such a being? Do I err

In deeming such inhabit many a spot?

Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.

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, unknell'd, uncoffin'd 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 wanton'd 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 extinguish'd 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

Less palpably before me

- and my visions flit
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.