Lord byron pathless woods meaning11/19/2023 ![]() ![]() Ye, who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene ![]() Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low.įarewell! a word that must be, and hath been-Ī sound which makes us linger yet, farewell! That which I have been-and my visions flit My midnight lamp-and what is writ, is writ. The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit The spell should break of this protracted dream. My task is done-my song hath ceased-my theme Made them a terror-’twas a pleasing fear,Īnd laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here. Of youthful sports was on thy breast to beīorne like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy Obeys thee: thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. The monsters of the deep are made each zone Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty’s formĬalm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,ĭark-heaving -boundless, endless, and sublime. Such as creation’s dawn beheld, thou rollest now. Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow. Unchangeable save to thy wild waves’ play. Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou, The stranger, slave, or savage their decay Thy waters washed them power while they were freeĪnd many a tyrant since: their shores obey Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee-Īssyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? They melt into thy yeast of waves, which marĪlike the Armada’s pride, or spoils of Trafalgar. These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,Īnd send’st him, shivering in thy playful sprayĪnd howling, to his gods, where haply liesĪnd dashest him again to earth:-there let him lay. His steps are not upon thy paths,-thy fieldsĪnd shake him from thee the vile strength he wieldsįor earth’s destruction thou dost all despise, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown. He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain Stops with the shore -upon the watery plain Man marks the earth with ruin-his control Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll! What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal. I love not Man the less, but Nature more,įrom these our interviews, in which I steal There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot. Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place, It may be read as an ode to the ocean, or perhaps an environmental poem. Pathless woods, steeped in peace and towering between heaven and earth would, I think, have that answer waiting for us if we were receptive enough to hear it.Beauty, Education, Poetry, The Environmentīelow is an excerpt of the last ten stanzas of Lord Byron’s ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,’ published originally in the 1810s. ![]() In the woods there must be a sense that time has ceased and that for a moment we pause on the edge of some extraordinary discovery, that for the space of a heartbeat we are close to knowledge, on the verge of the solution to all problems, on the threshold of an answer. And, unless a leaf fell or a bird sang, there would be silence in the woods except for one's own footsteps which would, I dare say, be hushed also. And, looking up, a patch of bright blue sky. " ~Lord Byron So walk with me a little while in the pathless woods and reflect upon the unknown.I find myself enchanted by Byron's " pathless woods," and it isn't hard to visualize them: tall, crowding trees, between which you make your way the scent of earth and foliage and of evergreens. ![]() "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods. ![]()
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