"Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since their shores obey."
That is (I beg pardon if I am unnecessarily explanatory), "The waters wasted these empires while they were free, and since they have been enslaved,"—an apt illustration of that indifference to human affairs which the poet is attributing to the ocean. The words, "the stranger, slave, or savage," which follow in the next line, are to be taken in connexion with the phrase "many a tyrant," and as an enumeration of the different sorts of tyrants to which these unhappy empires have been subjected.
This is my view of the sense of this famous passage: if any of your correspondents can point out a better, I can only say "candidus imperti," &c.
There was a very elaborate article on Lord Byron's Address to the Ocean in Blackwood's Magazine for October, 1848; but the writer, who dissects it almost line by line, has somehow, as is the wont of commentators, happened to pass over the difficulty which stands right in his way. To make up for this, however, he contrives to find new difficulties of his own. The following is a specimen:
"Recite," he says, "the stanza beginning,
'Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee;'
and when the sonorous roll has subsided, try to understand it. You will find some difficulty, if we mistake not, in knowing who or what is the apostrophized subject. Unquestionably the world's ocean, and not the Mediterranean. The very last verse we were far in the Atlantic:
'Thy shores are empires.'
The shores of the world's ocean are empires. There are, or have been, the British empire, the German empire, the Russian empire, and the empire of the Great Mogul, the Chinese empire, the empire of Morocco, the four great empires of antiquity, the French empire, and some others. The poet does not intend names and things in this very strict way, however," &c.