IMMUTABILITY OF THE SEA.
Our noble poet, Lord Byron, in his sublime apostrophe to the Sea, has most eloquently enunciated the startling fact revealed by modern geological researches,—namely, that if the character of immutability be attributable to anything on the surface of our planet, it is to the ocean and not to the land!—
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean—roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin—his controul
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, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown!
Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee,—
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
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—
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow:
Such as Creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now!
Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed—in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the Pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving, boundless, endless, and sublime—
The image of Eternity—the throne
Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee: thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone!
Childe Harold. Canto IV.
APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN.
I will conclude this "first lesson" with the following beautiful remark of an eminent living philosopher:[J]—"To discover order and intelligence, in scenes of apparent wildness and confusion, is the pleasing task of the geological inquirer; who recognises, in the changes which are continually taking place on the surface of the globe, a series of necessary operations, by which the harmony, beauty, and integrity of the Universe are maintained and perpetuated; and which must be regarded, not as symptoms of frailty or decay, but as wise provisions of the Supreme Cause, to ensure that circle of changes, so essential to animal and vegetable existence."