Dark-heaving—boundless, endless, and sublime—
The image of Eternity—the throne[1]
Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime[2]
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[3]
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.[4]
- ↑
The image of Eternity and Space
For who hath fixed thy limits——.—[MS. M. erased.] - ↑ [Compare Tennyson's In Memoriam, lv. stanza 6—
"Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with him."] - ↑ ["While at Aberdeen, he used often to steal from home unperceived; sometimes he would find his way to the seaside" (Life, p. 9). For an account of his feats in swimming, see Letters, 1898, i. 263, note 1; and letter to Murray, February 21, 1821. See, too, for a "more perilous, but less celebrated passage" (from Old Lisbon to Belem Castle), Travels in Albania, ii. 195.]
- ↑ ["It was a thought worthy of the great spirit of Byron, after exhibiting to us his Pilgrim amidst all the most striking scenes of earthly grandeur and earthly decay ... to conduct him and us at last to the borders of 'the Great Deep.' ... The image of the wanderer may well be associated, for a
