Byron in “The Haunting of Villa Diodati”

(reading his poem "Darkness.) The world was void, the populous and the powerful was a lump, seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless — a lump of death — a chaos of hard clay. Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea, and their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd they slept on the abyss without a surge — the waves were dead; the tides were in their grave, The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before; the winds were wither'd in the stagnant air, and the clouds perish'd; darkness had no need of aid from them — she was the Universe.