Wakes the brisk harmony that sailors love; A circle there of merry listeners stand Or to some well-known measure featly move, Thoughtless, as if on shore they still were free to rove.
XXII.
Through Calpe's straits survey the steepy shore;ei Europe and Afric on each other gaze!126 Lands of the dark-eyed Maid and dusky Moor Alike beheld beneath pale Hecate's blaze: How softly on the Spanish shore she plays!127 Disclosing rock, and slope, and forest brown,128 Distinct, though darkening with her waning phase; But Mauritania's giant-shadows frown, From mountain-cliff to coast descending sombre down.
XXIII.
'Tis night, when Meditation bids us feel
We once have loved, though Love is at an end:
The Heart, lone mourner of its baffled zeal,ej Though friendless now, will dream it had a friend. Who with the weight of years would wish to bend, When Youth itself survives young Love and Joy? Alas! when mingling souls forget to blend, Death hath but little left him to destroy! Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a boy?ek
XXIV.
Thus bending o'er the vessel's laving side,
To gaze on Dian's wave-reflected sphere,el The Soul forgets her schemes of Hope and Pride,em And flies unconscious o'er each backward year; None are so desolate but something dear,en Dearer than self, possesses or possessed A thought, and claims the homage of a tear; A flashing pang! of which the weary breast Would still, albeit in vain, the heavy heart divest.
To sit on rocks—to muse o'er flood and fell—
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not Man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;ep This is not Solitude—'tis but to hold Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.
XXVI.
But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,
And roam along, the World's tired denizen,
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;
Minions of Splendour shrinking from distress!130 None that, with kindred consciousness endued, If we were not, would seem to smile the less, Of all that flattered—followed—sought, and sued: This is to be alone—This, This is Solitude!eq
XXVII.131
More blest the life of godly Eremite,
Such as on lonely Athos may be seen,
Watching at eve upon the Giant Height,
Which looks o'er waves so blue, skies so serene,
That he who there at such an hour hath been
Will wistful linger on that hallowed spot;
Then slowly tear him from the 'witching scene,
Sigh forth one wish that such had been his lot,
Then turn to hate a world he had almost forgot.
XXVIII.
Pass we the long unvarying course, the track
Oft trod, that never leaves a trace behind;
Pass we the calm—the gale—the change—the tack,
And each well known caprice of wave and wind;
Pass we the joys and sorrows sailors find,
Cooped in their wingéd sea-girt citadel;
The foul—the fair—the contrary—the kind—
As breezes rise and fall and billows swell,
Till on some jocund morn—lo, Land! and All is well!
XXIX.
But not in silence pass Calypso's isles, 10.B. The sister tenants of the middle deep; There for the weary still a Haven smiles, Though the fair Goddess long hath ceased to weep, And o'er her cliffs a fruitless watch to keep For him who dared prefer a mortal bride: Here, too, his boy essayed the dreadful leap Stern Mentor urged from high to yonder tide; While thus of both bereft, the Nymph-Queen doubly sighed.132
XXX.
Her reign is past, her gentle glories gone:
But trust not this; too easy Youth, beware!
A mortal Sovereign holds her dangerous throne,
And thou may'st find a new Calypso there.
Sweet Florence133 could another ever share This wayward, loveless heart, it would be thine: But checked by every tie, I may not dare To cast a worthless offering at thy shrine, Nor ask so dear a breast to feel one pang for mine.
XXXI.
Thus Harold deemed, as on that Lady's eye
He looked, and met its beam without a thought,
