Austin Martin
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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, 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, unknelled, uncoffined, and
unknown.
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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.
Rhyme Scheme – ABABBCBCC
The author speaks of the ocean rolling on, or
flowing in reference to the waves.
Ships may sail on top of the water, but nothing
can be done to the ocean.
Man symbolizes ruin and destroys the world, but
mans control cannot go farther than the shore,
leaving the ocean untouched.
All the shipwrecks are part of the oceans will, but
a shadow of what mans destructions are.
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Like a drop of rain, a man could fall into the
depths of the ocean with a bubbly groan and
become lost, without a coffin or grave.
Byron is speaking to the ocean telling how
powerful, vast, and unchanging it is.
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The author compares the oceans shores to
empires, and lists many other empires that
have been “powerful” and asks “what are
they?”
He tells that the empires answer to everything
– slaves, stranger, and savage, but the ocean
answers to nobody.
The empires downfall has dried up many
realms into deserts, but the ocean has done no
such thing.

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The ocean is unchangeable with its wild waves
playing endlessly, times has no affect on it
unlike the many empires.
Just like when first created, the ocean still rolls
the same.
Rhyme Scheme – ABABBCBCC
The author is speaking about how the ocean is
more powerful than man and does not change
unlike man
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