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and the final task for the pair is to look upon the sea. The reason for this lies in thebeginning of the pilgrimage, and its motivation: Harold sets out dissatisfied, his joyscorrupted by Time. As he travels, he sees many things which people value, but all arecorrupted, or, at best, corruptible. In the end, he finds the ocean, and the ocean isincorruptible, despite the concerted efforts of humanity, and even of all-destroyingTime:Man marks the earth with ruin – his controlStops with the shore; – upon the watery plainThe wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remainA shadow of man’s ravage[…]His steps are not upon thy paths, – thy fieldsAre not a spoil for him, – thou dost ariseAnd shake him from thee; the vile strength he wieldsFor earth’s destruction thou dost all despise,And send’st him, shivering in thy playful sprayAnd howling, to his Gods[…]Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow –Such as creation’s dawn beheld, thou rollest now. (4.179.1605-8, 180.1612-7,182.1637-8).The poet has, at last, something utterly pure, and permanently so, something whichcan withstand all ravages of human society and of time. As Bernard Blackstonenotes, even in Byron’s day, it was not accurate to claim that “The wrecks are all thydeed” (4.179.1607), since war sank so many ships. 120 This is not simply a naturalisticportrayal of the ocean, however, but an idealisation of the ocean as Οκεανος, thewater which contains the world. This pure entity CHP then describes in singularlyreligious terms:of the Heart: an introduction to Sufism and the Tariqats of Anatolia and the Balkans, trans. by RickardBlakney (Istanbul: Redhouse Press, 1988), p.23. Turkish Sufism may well have had some influenceupon Byron, as discussed further in relation to the Eastern Tales.120 Blackstone also rightly comments that the ocean is no longer proof against human pollution (p.225).76