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,[1] and feel
What I can ne'er express—yet can not all conceal.
CLXXIX.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean—roll!
- ↑ [Compare Childe Harold, Canto III. stanza lxxii. lines 8, 9; and Epistle to Augusta, stanza xi.]
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
Go where I will, to me thou art the same—
A loved regret which I would not resign.
There yet are two things in my destiny,—
A world to roam through and a home with thee.
"The first were nothing—had I still the last,
It were the haven of my happiness."]}}
