How would our hearts with wisdom talk 50 55 Seek we no more: content with these, Let present Rapture, Comfort, Ease, As Heaven shall bid them, come and go:- 60 Only, O Lord, in thy dear love Fit us for perfect Rest above; KEBLE. EVENING. T' is gone, that bright and orbed blaze, The traveller on his way must press, 5 10 O! may no earth-born cloud arise We are in port if we have Thee. The rulers of this Christian land, "Twixt Thee and us ordain'd to stand,- O! by thine own sad burden, borne Teach Thou thy Priests their daily cross We lose ourselves in Heaven above. 45 50 55 KEBLE. THE OCEAN. THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods, What I can ne'er express, yet can not all conceal. 5 Roll on, thou deep and dark-blue ocean-roll! 10 15 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. 20 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. 25 30 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 35 Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar. 4' Thy shores are empires, changed in all save theeAssyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? 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' playTime writes no wrinkle on thine azure browSuch as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm, 51. 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. BYRON. MODERN GREECE. HE who hath bent him o'er the dead Ere the first day of death is fled, The last of danger and distress, Have swept the lines where beauty lingers), The rapture of repose that's there, The fix'd yet tender traits that streak And-but for that sad shrouded eye, That fires not, wins not, weeps not, now, Where cold Obstruction's apathy Appals the gazing mourner's heart, As if to him it could impart The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon; Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour, |