On the Anniversary of Lord Byron’s Death

Joseph Denis Odevaere, Lord Byron on His Deathbed, 1826.

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, not does 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.

—George Gordon Byron, from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, canto II