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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=115251" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Mediterranean</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">[A SCHOOL COMPOSITION.]<br> <br>  Hail! thou eternal flood, whose restless waves<br>  Roll onward in their course, as wild and free,<br>  As if the shores they lashed were not the graves<br>  Of mouldering empires; When I think of thee,<br>  Thou dost remind me of that ebbless sea --<br>  The sea of Time, whose tide sweeps unconfined,<br>  Its channel Earth, its shores Eternity;<br>  Whose billows roll resistless o'er mankind; --<br> Like that thou rollest on, nor heed'st the wrecks behind.<br> <br>  Thy shores were empires; but the tide of Time<br>  Rolled o'er them, and they fell; and there they lie,<br>  Wrecked in their greatness, mouldering, yet sublime<br>  And beautiful in their mortality.<br>  And god-like men were there, the wise and free;<br>  But what are they who now look o'er thy waves?<br>  They're but as worms that feed on their decay;<br>  They kneel to stranger lords -- a land of slaves,<br> Of men whose only boast is their ancestral graves.<br> <br>  Upon thy shores the Holy Prophets trod,<br>  And from their hill-tops came the voice of One<br>  Whom thou obeyest, even the Eternal God;<br>  And on thy breast the star of Bethlehem shone:<br>  That star, though quenched in blood, hath risen a sun,<br>  And other climes are radiant with its light;<br>  But thy fair shores, alas! it shines not on,<br>  Save when some land, with its effulgence bright,<br> Reflects the heavenly rays upon their moral night.<br> <br>  Philosophy hath decked her form divine,<br>  In all her loveliest draperies, and wrought<br>  Her brightest dreams by thee, thy shores her shrine,<br>  Thy sons her oracles, the kings of thought;<br>  But they have passed, and, save their names, are naught,<br>  And their bright dreams are buried like their clay,<br>  Or shattered, like the fanes where they were taught.<br>  But though religions, empires, men decay,<br> Thou, restless, changeless flood -- thou dost not pass away.<br> <br>  There Poesy hath woven such fair dreams,<br>  That man hath deemed them bright reality;<br>  There she hath peopled hills, and vales, and streams,<br>  And thy blue waters with her phantasy;<br>  And fabled gods left heaven to roam by thee:<br>  There she embodied passions of the heart,<br>  In such fair forms, that frail morality<br>  Failed to conceive, until triumphal Art<br> Bade from the Parian stone the immortal image start.<br> <br>  The loftiest bards, whose names illume the past,<br>  Have sung upon thy shores; and thy deep tone<br>  Ceased at their Orphean lyres; -- but now the last,<br>  "The pilgrim bard," whose matchless song alone<br>  Had made thy name immortal as his own, --<br>  A stranger of the north, but, "as it were<br>  A child of thee," his spirit too hath flown.<br>  Thus have the greatest passed. Thine azure air<br> Still echoes to their song, but thou alone art there.<br> <br>  Thine empires, one by one, have fall'n, and now<br>  The last is crumbling in decay: -- yes, she,<br>  The coronet upon thy furrowed brow,<br>  The mistress of the world, the queen of thee,<br>  The paradise of earth, sweet Italy;<br>  Stript of her queenly robes, in dust she lies,<br>  Enchained by slaves, nor struggling to be free.<br>  There hath she fallen, as the dolphin dies,<br> More brightly beautiful in her last agonies.<br> <br>  But though thy shores are sepulchres, that Time<br>  Hath peopled with dead empires; though they are<br>  But shattered wrecks, and every other clime<br>  Hath sprung from their decay; yet Nature there<br>  Hath made their pall of beauty sadly fair;<br>  And they shall be, while thy blue waves shall foam,<br>  The Mecca of the world, -- the altar, where<br>  Science, Devotion, Genius, Art shall come,<br> And feel as Moslems feel above their prophet's tomb.<br> <br>  And thou, unchanging flood, that wanderest on,<br>  Through that dark path of ruin and decay,<br>  Still must thou roll untended and alone.<br>  Men shall arise, and shine, and pass away,<br>  Like the bright bubbles of thy glittering spray;<br>  And thrones shall totter, kingdoms be laid waste --<br>  Yea, empires rise and fall along thy way,<br>  Like the dark heavings of thy troubled breast;<br> But thou shalt still roll on -- for thee there is no rest.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Anne+Lynch+Botta">Anne Lynch Botta</a> from <i>Poems</i><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=115251" data-title="The Mediterranean de Anne Lynch Botta" data-description="[A SCHOOL COMPOSITION.]/ /  Hail! thou eternal flood, whose restless waves/  Roll onward in their course, as wild and free,/  As if the shores they lashed were not the graves/  Of mouldering empires; When I think of thee,/  Thou dost remind me of ..."></div>
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