<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=538662" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Spirit Of Discovery By Sea - Book The First</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Awake a louder and a loftier strain!<br>Beloved harp, whose tones have oft beguiled<br>My solitary sorrows, when I left<br>The scene of happier hours, and wandered far,<br>A pale and drooping stranger; I have sat<br>(While evening listened to the convent bell)<br>On the wild margin of the Rhine, and wooed<br>Thy sympathies, 'a-weary of the world,'<br>And I have found with thee sad fellowship,<br>Yet always sweet, whene'er my languid hand <br>Passed carelessly o'er the responsive wires,<br>While unambitious of the laurelled meed<br>That crowns the gifted bard, I only asked<br>Some stealing melodies, the heart might love,<br>And a brief sonnet to beguile my tears!<br>But I had hope that one day I might wake<br>Thy strings to loftier utterance; and now,<br>Bidding adieu to glens, and woods, and streams,<br>And turning where, magnificent and vast,<br>Main Ocean bursts upon my sight, I strike,-- <br>Rapt in the theme on which I long have mused,--<br>Strike the loud lyre, and as the blue waves rock,<br>Swell to their solemn roar the deepening chords.<br>Lift thy indignant billows high, proclaim<br>Thy terrors, Spirit of the hoary seas!<br>I sing thy dread dominion, amid wrecks,<br>And storms, and howling solitudes, to Man<br>Submitted: awful shade of Camoens<br>Bend from the clouds of heaven.<br>By the bold tones <br>Of minstrelsy, that o'er the unknown surge<br>(Where never daring sail before was spread)<br>Echoed, and startled from his long repose<br>The indignant Phantom of the stormy Cape;<br>Oh, let me think that in the winds I hear<br>Thy animating tones, whilst I pursue<br>With ardent hopes, like thee, my venturous way,<br>And bid the seas resound my song! And thou,<br>Father of Albion's streams, majestic Thames,<br>Amid the glittering scene, whose long-drawn wave <br>Goes noiseless, yet with conscious pride, beneath<br>The thronging vessels' shadows; nor through scenes<br>More fair, the yellow Tagus, or the Nile,<br>That ancient river, winds. THOU to the strain<br>Shalt haply listen, that records the MIGHT<br>Of OCEAN, like a giant at thy feet<br>Vanquished, and yielding to thy gentle state<br>The ancient sceptre of his dread domain!<br>All was one waste of waves, that buried deep<br>Earth and its multitudes: the Ark alone, <br>High on the cloudy van of Ararat,<br>Rested; for now the death-commissioned storm<br>Sinks silent, and the eye of day looks out<br>Dim through the haze; while short successive gleams<br>Flit o'er the weltering Deluge as it shrinks,<br>Or the transparent rain-drops, falling few,<br>Distinct and larger glisten. So the Ark<br>Rests upon Ararat; but nought around<br>Its inmates can behold, save o'er th' expanse<br>Of boundless waters, the sun's orient orb <br>Stretching the hull's long shadow, or the moon<br>In silence, through the silver-cinctured clouds,<br>Sailing as she herself were lost, and left<br>In Nature's loneliness!<br>But oh, sweet Hope,<br>Thou bid'st a tear of holy ecstasy<br>Start to their eye-lids, when at night the Dove,<br>Weary, returns, and lo! an olive leaf<br>Wet in her bill: again she is put forth,<br>When the seventh morn shines on the hoar abyss:-- <br>Due evening comes: her wings are heard no more!<br>The dawn awakes, not cold and dripping sad,<br>But cheered with lovelier sunshine; far away<br>The dark-red mountains slow their naked peaks<br>Upheave above the waste; Imaus gleams;<br>Fume the huge torrents on his desert sides;<br>Till at the awful voice of Him who rules<br>The storm, the ancient Father and his train<br>On the dry land descend.<br>Here let us pause. <br>No noise in the vast circuit of the globe<br>Is heard; no sound of human stirring: none<br>Of pasturing herds, or wandering flocks; nor song<br>Of birds that solace the forsaken woods<br>From morn till eve; save in that spot that holds<br>The sacred Ark: there the glad sounds ascend,<br>And Nature listens to the breath of Life.<br>The fleet horse bounds, high-neighing to the wind<br>That lifts his streaming mane; the heifer lows;<br>Loud sings the lark amid the rainbow's hues; <br>The lion lifts him muttering; MAN comes forth--<br>He kneels upon the earth--he kisses it;<br>And to the GOD who stretched that radiant bow,<br>He lifts his trembling transports.<br>From one spot<br>Alone of earth such sounds ascend. How changed<br>The human prospect! when from realm to realm,<br>From shore to shore, from isle to furthest isle,<br>Flung to the stormy main, man's murmuring race,<br>Various and countless as the shells that strew <br>The ocean's winding marge, are spread; from shores<br>Sinensian, where the passing proas gleam<br>Innumerous 'mid the floating villages:<br>To Acapulco west, where laden deep<br>With gold and gems rolls the superb galleon,<br>Shadowing the hoar Pacific: from the North,<br>Where on some snowy promontory's height<br>The Lapland wizard beats his drum, and calls<br>The spirits of the winds, to th' utmost South,<br>Where savage Fuego shoots its cold white peaks, <br>Dreariest of lands, and the poor Pecherais<br>Shiver and moan along its waste of snows.<br>So stirs the earth; and for the Ark that passed<br>Alone and darkling o'er the dread abyss,<br>Ten thousand and ten thousand barks are seen<br>Fervent and glancing on the friths and sounds;<br>From the Bermudian that, with masts inclined,<br>Shoots like a dart along; to the tall ship<br>That, like a stately swan, in conscious pride<br>Breasts beautiful the rising surge, and throws <br>The gathered waters back, and seems to move<br>A living thing, along her lucid way<br>Streaming in white-winged glory to the sun!<br>Some waft the treasures of the east; some bear<br>Their country's dark artillery o'er the surge<br>Frowning; some in the southern solitudes,<br>Bound on discovery of new regions, spread,<br>'Mid rocks of driving ice, that crash around,<br>Their weather-beaten mainsail; or explore<br>Their perilous way from isle to isle, and wind <br>The tender social tie; connecting man,<br>Wherever scattered, with his fellow-man.<br>How many ages rolled away ere thus,<br>From NATURE'S GENERAL WRECK, the world's great scene<br>Was tenanted! See from their sad abode,<br>At Heaven's dread voice, heard from the solitude,<br>As in the dayspring of created things,<br>The sad survivors of a buried world<br>Come forth; on them, though desolate their seat,<br>The sky looks down with smiles; for the broad sun, <br>That to the west slopes his untired career,<br>Hangs o'er the water's brim. The aged sire,<br>Now rising from his evening sacrifice,<br>Amid his offspring stands, and lifts his eyes,<br>Moist with a tear, to the bright bow: the fire<br>Yet on the altar burns, whose trailing fume<br>Goes slowly up, and marks the lucid cope<br>Of the soft sky, where distant clouds hang still<br>And beautiful. So placid Evening steals<br>After the lurid storm, like a sweet form <br>Of fairy following a perturbed shape<br>Of giant terror, that in darkness strode.<br>Slow sinks the lord of day; the clustering clouds<br>More ardent burn; confusion of rich hues,<br>Crimson, and gold, and purple, bright, inlay<br>Their varied edges; till before the eye,<br>As their last lustre fades, small silver stars<br>Succeed; and twinkling each in its own sphere,<br>Thick as the frost's unnumbered spangles, strew<br>The slowly-paling heavens. Tired Nature seems <br>Like one who, struggling long for life, had beat<br>The billows, and scarce gained a desert crag,<br>O'er-spent, to sink to rest: the tranquil airs<br>Whisper repose. Now sunk in sleep reclines<br>The Father of the world; then the sole moon<br>Mounts high in shadowy beauty; every cloud<br>Retires, as in the blue space she moves on<br>Amid the fulgent orbs supreme, and looks<br>The queen of heaven and earth. Stilly the streams<br>Retiring sound; midnight's high hollow vault <br>Faint echoes; stilly sound the distant streams.<br>When, hark! a strange and mingled wail, and cries<br>As of ten thousand thousand perishing!<br>A phantom, 'mid the shadows of the dead,<br>Before the holy Patriarch, as he slept,<br>Stood terrible:--Dark as a storm it stood<br>Of thunder and of winds, like hollow seas<br>Remote; meantime a voice was heard: Behold,<br>Noah, the foe of thy weak race! my name<br>Destruction, whom thy sons in yonder plains <br>Shall worship, and all grim, with mooned horns<br>Paint fabling: when the flood from off the earth<br>Before it swept the living multitudes,<br>I rode amid the hurricane; I heard<br>The universal shriek of all that lived.<br>In vain they climbed the rocky heights: I struck<br>The adamantine mountains, and like dust<br>They crumbled in the billowy foam. My hall,<br>Deep in the centre of the seas, received<br>The victims as they sank! Then, with dark joy, <br>I sat amid ten thousand carcases,<br>That weltered at my feet! But THOU and THINE<br>Have braved my utmost fury: what remains<br>But vengeance, vengeance on thy hated race;--<br>And be that sheltering shrine the instrument!<br>Thence, taught to stem the wild sea when it roars,<br>In after-times to lands remote, where roamed<br>The naked man and his wan progeny,<br>They, more instructed in the fatal use<br>Of arts and arms, shall ply their way; and thou <br>Wouldst bid the great deep cover thee to see<br>The sorrows of thy miserable sons:<br>But turn, and view in part the truths I speak.<br>He said, and vanished with a dismal sound<br>Of lamentation from his grisly troop.<br>Then saw the just man in his dream what seemed<br>A new and savage land: huge forests stretched<br>Their world of wood, shading like night the banks<br>Of torrent-foaming rivers, many a league<br>Wandering and lost in solitudes; green isles <br>Here shone, and scattered huts beneath the shade<br>Of branching palms were seen; whilst in the sun<br>A naked infant playing, stretched his hand<br>To reach a speckled snake, that through the leaves<br>Oft darted, or its shining volumes rolled<br>Erratic.<br>From the woods a sable man<br>Came, as from hunting; in his arms he took<br>The smiling child, that with the feathers played<br>Which nodded on his brow; the sheltering hut <br>Received them, and the cheerful smoke went up<br>Above the silent woods.<br>Anon was heard<br>The sound as of strange thunder, from the mouths<br>Of hollow engines, as, with white sails spread,<br>Tall vessels, hulled like the great Ark, approached<br>The verdant shores: they, in a woody cove<br>Safe-stationed, hang their pennants motionless<br>Beneath the palms. Meantime, with shouts and song,<br>The boat rows hurrying to the land; nor long <br>Ere the great sea for many a league is tinged,<br>While corpse on corpse, down the red torrent rolled,<br>Floats, and the inmost forests murmur--Blood.<br>Now vast savannahs meet the view, where high<br>Above the arid grass the serpent lifts<br>His tawny crest:--Not far a vessel rides<br>Upon the sunny main, and to the shore<br>Black savage tribes a mournful captive urge,<br>Who looks to heaven with anguish. Him they cast<br>Bound in the rank hold of the prison-ship, <br>With many a sad associate in despair,<br>Each panting chained to his allotted space;<br>And moaning, whilst their wasted eye-balls roll.<br>Another scene appears: the naked slave<br>Writhes to the bloody lash; but more to view<br>Nature forbad, for starting from his dream<br>The just Man woke. Shuddering he gazed around;<br>He saw the earliest beam of morning shine<br>Slant on the hills without; he heard the breath<br>Of placid kine, but troubled thoughts and sad <br>Arose. He wandered forth; and now far on,<br>By heavy musings led, reached a ravine<br>Most mild amid the tempest-riven rocks,<br>Through whose dark pass he saw the flood remote<br>Gray-spreading, while the mists of morn went up.<br>He paused; when on his lonely pathway flashed<br>A light, and sounds as of approaching wings<br>Instant were heard. A radiant form appeared,<br>Celestial, and with heavenly accent said:<br>Noah, I come commissioned from above, <br>Where angels move before th' eternal throne<br>Of heaven's great King in glory, to dispel<br>The mists of darkness from thy sight; for know,<br>Not unpermitted of th' Eternal One<br>The shadows of thy melancholy dream<br>Hung o'er thee slumbering: Mine the task to show<br>Futurity's faint scene;--now follow me.<br>He said; and up to the unclouded height<br>Of that great Eastern mountain, that surveys<br>Dim Asia, they ascended. Then his brow <br>The Angel touched, and cleared with whispered charm<br>The mortal mist before his eyes.--At once<br>(As in the skiey mirage, when the seer<br>From lonely Kilda's western summit sees<br>A wondrous scene in shadowy vision rise)<br>The NETHER WORLD, with seas and shores, appeared<br>Submitted to his view: but not as then,<br>A melancholy waste, deform and sad;<br>But fair as now the green earth spreads, with woods,<br>Champaign, and hills, and many winding streams <br>Robed, the magnificent illusion rose.<br>He saw in mazy longitude devolved<br>The mighty Brahma-Pooter; to the East<br>Thibet and China, and the shining sea<br>That sweeps the inlets of Japan, and winds<br>Amid the Curile and Aleutian isles,<br>Pale to the north. Siberia's snowy scenes<br>Are spread; Jenisca and the freezing Ob<br>Appear, and many a forest's shady track<br>Far as the Baltic, and the utmost bounds <br>Of Scandinavia; thence the eye returns:<br>And lo! great Lebanon--abrupt and dark<br>With pines, and airy Carmel, rising slow<br>Above the midland main, where hang the capes<br>Of Italy and Greece; swart Africa,<br>Beneath the parching sun, her long domain<br>Reveals, the mountains of the Moon, the source<br>Of Nile, the wild mysterious Niger, lost<br>Amid the torrid sands; and to the south<br>Her stormy cape. Beyond the misty main <br>The weary eye scarce wanders, when behold<br>Plata, through vaster territory poured;<br>And Andes, sweeping the horizon's tract,<br>Mightiest of mountains! whose eternal snows<br>Feel not the nearer sun; whose umbrage chills<br>The murmuring ocean; whose volcanic fires<br>A thousand nations view, hung like the moon<br>High in the middle waste of heaven; thy range,<br>Shading far off the Southern hemisphere,<br>A dusky file Titanic. <br>So spread<br>Before our great forefather's view the globe<br>Appeared; with seas, and shady continents,<br>And verdant isles, and mountains lifting dark<br>Their forests, and indenting rivers, poured<br>In silvery maze. And, Lo! the Angel said,<br>These scenes, O Noah, thy posterity<br>Shall people; but remote and scattered wide,<br>They shall forget their GOD, and see no trace,<br>Save dimly, of their Great Original. <br>Rude caves shall be their dwellings: till, with noise<br>Of multitudes, imperial cities rise.<br>But the Arch Fiend, the foe of GOD and man,<br>Shall fling his spells; and, 'mid illusions drear,<br>Blear Superstition shall arise, the earth<br>Eclipsing.--Deep in caves, vault within vault<br>Far winding; or in night of thickest woods,<br>Where no bird sings; or 'mid huge circles gray<br>Of uncouth stone, her aspect wild, and pale<br>As the terrific flame that near her burns, <br>She her mysterious rites, 'mid hymns and cries,<br>Shall wake, and to her shapeless idols, vast<br>And smeared with blood, or shrines of lust, shall lead<br>Her votaries, maddening as she waves her torch,<br>With visage more expanded, to the groans<br>Of human sacrifice.<br>Nor think that love<br>And happiness shall dwell in vales remote:<br>The naked man shall see the glorious sun,<br>And think it but enlightens his poor isle, <br>Hid in the watery waste; cold on his limbs<br>The ocean-spray shall beat; his Deities<br>Shall be the stars, the thunder, and the winds;<br>And if a stranger on his rugged shores<br>Be cast, his offered blood shall stain the strand.<br>O wretched man! who then shall raise thee up<br>From this thy dark estate, forlorn and lost?<br>The Patriarch said.<br>The Angel answered mild,<br>His God, who destined him to noblest ends! <br>But mutual intercourse shall stir at first<br>The sunk and grovelling spirit, and from sleep<br>The sullen energies of man rouse up,<br>As of a slumbering giant. He shall walk<br>Sublime amid the works of GOD: the earth<br>Shall own his wide dominion; the great sea<br>Shall toss in vain its roaring waves; his eye<br>Shall scan the bright orbs as they roll above<br>Glorious, and his expanding heart shall burn,<br>As wide and wider in magnificence <br>The vast scene opens; in the winds and clouds,<br>The seas, and circling planets, he shall see<br>The shadow of a dread Almighty move.<br>Then shall the Dayspring rise, before whose beam<br>The darkness of the world is past:--For, hark!<br>Seraphs and angel-choirs with symphonies<br>Acclaiming of ten thousand golden harps,<br>Amid the bursting clouds of heaven revealed,<br>At once, in glory jubilant, they sing--<br>God the Redeemer liveth! He who took <br>Man's nature on him, and in human shroud<br>Veiled his immortal glory! He is risen!<br>God the Redeemer liveth! And behold!<br>The gates of life and immortality<br>Open to all that breathe!<br>Oh, might the strains<br>But win the world to love; meek Charity<br>Should lift her looks and smile; and with faint voice<br>The weary pilgrim of the earth exclaim,<br>As close his eye-lids--Death, where is thy sting? <br>O Grave, where is thy victory?<br>And ye,<br>Whom ocean's melancholy wastes divide,<br>Who slumber to the sullen surge, awake,<br>Break forth into thanksgiving, for the bark<br>That rolled upon the desert deep, shall bear<br>The tidings of great joy to all that live,<br>Tidings of life and light.<br>Oh, were those men,<br>(The Patriarch raised his drooping looks, and said) <br>Such in my dream I saw, who to the isles<br>And peaceful sylvan scenes o'er the wide seas<br>Came tilting; then their murderous instruments<br>Lifted, that flashed to the indignant sun,<br>Whilst the poor native died:--Oh, were those men<br>Instructed in the laws of holier love,<br>Thou hast displayed?<br>The Angel meek replied--<br>Call rather fiends of hell those who abuse<br>The mercies they receive: that such, indeed, <br>On whom the light of clearer knowledge beams,<br>Should wander forth, and for the tender voice<br>Of charity should scatter crimes and woe,<br>And drench, where'er they pass, the earth with blood,<br>Might make ev'n angels weep:<br>But the poor tribes<br>That groaned and died, deem not them innocent<br>As injured; more ensanguined rites and deeds<br>Of deepest stain were theirs; and what if God,<br>So to approve his justice, and exact <br>Most even retribution, blood for blood,<br>Bid forth the Angel of the storm of death!<br>Thou saw'st, indeed, the seeming innocence<br>Of man the savage; but thou saw'st not all.<br>Behold the scene more near! hear the shrill whoop<br>Of murderous war! See tribes on neighbour tribes<br>Rush howling, their red hatchets wielding high,<br>And shouting to their barbarous gods! Behold<br>The captive bound, yet vaunting direst hate,<br>And mocking his tormentors, while they gash <br>His flesh unshrinking, tear his eyeballs, burn<br>His beating breast! Hear the dark temples ring<br>To groans and hymns of murderous sacrifice;<br>While the stern priest, the rites of horror done,<br>With hollow-echoing chaunt lifts up the heart<br>Of the last victim 'mid the yelling throng,<br>Quivering, and red, and reeking to the sun!<br>Reclaimed by gradual intercourse, his heart<br>Warmed with new sympathies, the forest-chief<br>Shall cast the bleeding hatchet to his gods <br>Of darkness, and one Lord of all adore--<br>Maker of heaven and earth.<br>Let it suffice,<br>He hath permitted EVIL for a while<br>To mingle its deep hues and sable shades<br>Amid life's fair perspective, as thou saw'st<br>Of late the blackening clouds; but in the end<br>All these shall roll away, and evening still<br>Come smilingly, while the great sun looks down<br>On the illumined scene. So Charity <br>Shall smile on all the earth, and Nature's God<br>Look down upon his works; and while far off<br>The shrieking night-fiends fly, one voice shall rise<br>From shore to shore, from isle to furthest isle--<br>Glory to God on high, and on earth peace,<br>Peace and good-will to men!<br>Thou rest in hope,<br>And Him with meekness and with trust adore!<br>He said, and spreading bright his ampler wing,<br>Flew to the heaven of heavens; the meek man bowed<br>Adoring, and, with pensive thoughts resigned,<br>Bent from the aching height his lonely way.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=William+Lisle+Bowles">William Lisle Bowles</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <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=538662" data-title="The Spirit Of Discovery By Sea - Book The First de William Lisle Bowles" data-description="Awake a louder and a loftier strain! Beloved harp, whose tones have oft beguiled My solitary sorrows, when I left The scene of happier hours, and wandered far, A pale and drooping stranger; I have sat (While evening listened to the convent bell) O..."></div> </div> </div>

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