Two truths are told,

As happy prologues to the swelling act

Of the imperial theme.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act i. Sc. 3.

Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless billows;

Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky and the ocean.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): The Homeric Hexameter. (Translated from Schiller.)

Be that blind bard who on the Chian strand,

By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,

Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey

Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): Fancy in Nubibus.