"There is a society, where none intrudes, by the deep sea

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 ...

Thy shores are empires changed in all save thee--
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?

Thy waters washed them power 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. ...

... And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers--they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror--'twas a pleasing fear;
For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane--as I do here.

--Byron, "Apostrophe to an Ocean"