CLXXVII. Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,[543] With one fair Spirit for my minister, That I might all forget the human race, And, hating no one, love but only her! Ye elements!--in whose ennobling stir I feel myself exalted--Can ye not Accord me such a Being? Do I err In deeming such inhabit many a spot? Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot. CLXXVIII. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and Music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe,[544] and feel What I can ne'er express--yet can not all conceal. CLXXIX. 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.[qe] CLXXX. 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--[545] 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.[qf][546] CLXXXI. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, And Monarchs tremble in their Capitals, The oak Leviathans,[547] whose huge ribs make[qg] 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 Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar.[548] CLXXXII. Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee-- Assyria--Greece--Rome--Carthage--what are they?[549] Thy waters washed[550] them power while they were free,[qh] 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' play,[qi] Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow-- Such as Creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. CLXXXIII.