Puslapio vaizdai
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One noble stroke with a whole life

may glow,

Or deify the canvas till it shine With beauty so surpassing all below,

That they who kneel to idols so divine

Break no commandment, for high heaven is there

Transfused, transfigurated: and the line

Of poesy which peoples but the air With thought and beings of our thought reflected,

Can do no more: then let the artist share

The palm; he shares the peril, and dejected

Faints o'er the labor unapproved
-Alas!

Despair and genius are too oft con-
nected.

[From Childe Harold.]

THE MISERY OF EXCESS.
TO INEZ.

NAY, smile not at my sullen brow,
Alas! I cannot smile again:
Yet Heaven avert that ever thou
Shouldst weep, and haply weep in
vain.

And dost thou ask, what secret woe
I bear, corroding joy and youth?
And wilt thou vainly seek to know
A pang, even thou must fail to
soothe ?

It is not love, it is not hate,

Nor low ambition's honors lost, That bids me loathe my present state, And fly from all I prize the most!

It is that weariness which springs From all I meet, or hear, or see; To me no pleasure Beauty brings: Thine eyes have scarce a charin for

me.

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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.

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

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azure brow

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.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy [to be Of youthful sports was on thy breast Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy

I wantoned with thy breakers- they

to me

| sea Were a delight; and if the freshening Made them a terror-'twas a pleas

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[From Childe Harold.]

CALM AND TEMPEST AT NIGHT ON LAKE LEMAN (GENEVA). CLEAR, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,

With the wide world I dwelt in is a thing

Which warns me, with its stillness, [spring. to forsake Earth's troubled waters for a purer This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing To waft me from distraction; once I loved

Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring

Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved,

Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou That I with stern delights should e'er

rollest now.

have been so moved.

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