Excerpt from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimmage

By George Gordon Lord Byron

1818

   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.

   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.