I think the answers in the link above are right, but I would add (since we are talking what it really means!) that the untamable ocean is about more than just “love of nature.” To me, the ocean is a tangible expression of the boundless nature of desire—not just sexual desire, but the chaotic, powerful spirit of the desire to live.
Byron’s poetry, generally speaking, is mostly about Byron. Byron’s own life was infamously one of excess and appetite; eventually he was forced to flee England because of allegations of incest and sodomy. So in a way, the famous lines “Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean—Roll! / Ten thousand fleets sweep o’er thee in vain” describe the ocean as a lawless force that “ten thousand” navies cannot control or police—like Byron himself!
But more than that, the ocean is a force of nature that transcends any one individual; seen in this way, the ocean becomes the natural embodiment of the poet’s passion for life. This is not a symbolic connection, but a real one. In the last stanza, the poet declares his affinity for the sea:
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.
The image of the poet “borne like bubbles” on the waves is one that anyone who has been to the beach can understand. The reality of the power of the ocean is undeniable and obvious, as is the poet’s love of the water. The poet is “as it were a child” of the ocean; the fear it causes is “pleasing” because the poet “trusts” the ocean like he would a parent, but also because, as its child, the limitless power of the ocean will also somehow be his inheritance.
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