Even thus they creep into the spectral gray,
That cramps the landscape in its narrow brim,
As when two shadows by old Lethe stray,
He clasping her and she entwining him;
Like trees wind-parted that embrace anon,
True love so often goes before 't is gone.
For what rich merchant but will pause in fear,
To trust his wealth to the unsafe abyss?
So Hero dotes upon her treasure here,
And sums the loss with many an anxious kiss,
Whilst her fond eyes grow dizzy in her head,
Fear aggravating fear with shows of dread.
She thinks how many have been sunk and drowned,
And spies their snow-white bones below the deep,
Then calls huge congregated monsters round,
And plants a rock wherever he would leap;
Anon she dwells on a fantastic dream,
Which she interprets of that fatal stream.
Saying, "That honeyed fly I saw was thee,
Which lighted on a water-lily's cup,
When, lo! the flower, enamored of my bee,
Closed on him suddenly and locked him up,
And he was smothered in her drenching dew;
Therefore this day thy drowning I shall rue."
But next, remembering her virgin fame,
She clips him in her arms and bids him go,
But seeing him break loose repents her shame,
And plucks him back upon her bosom's snow;
And tears unfix her iced resolve again,
As steadfast frosts are thawed by showers of rain
O for a type of parting!
Love to love
Is like the fond attraction of two spheres,
Which needs a godlike effort to remove,
And then sink down their sunny atmospheres
In rain and darkness on each ruined heart,
Nor yet their melodies will sound apart.
So brave Leander sunders from his bride;
The wrenching pang disparts his soul in twain,
Half stays with her, half goes towards the tide,-
And life must ache until they join again.
Now wouldst thou know the wideness of the wound
Mete every step he takes upon the ground.
And for the agony and bosom-throe,
Let it be measured by the wide vast air,
For that is infinite, and so is woe,
Since parted lovers breathe it everywhere.
Look how it heaves Leander's laboring chest,
Panting, at poise, upon a rocky crest!
From which he leaps into the scooping brine,
That shocks his bosom with a double chill;
Because, all hours, till the slow sun's decline,
That cold divorcer will betwixt them still;
Wherefore he likens it to Styx' foul tide,
Where life grows death upon the other side.
Then sadly he confronts his two-fold toil
Against rude waves and an unwilling mind,
Wishing, alas! with the stout rower's toil,
That like a rower he might gaze behind,
And watch that lonely statue he hath left
On her bleak summit, weeping and bereft!
Yet turning oft, he sees her troubled locks
Pursue him still the furthest that they may;
Her marble arms that overstretch the rocks,
And her pale passioned hands that seem to pray
In dumb petition to the gods above:
Love prays devoutly when it prays for love!
Then with deep sighs he blows away the wave,
That hangs superfluous tears upon his cheek,
And bans his labor like a hopeless slave,
That, chained in hostile galley, faint and weak,
Plies on despairing through the restless foam,
Thoughtful of his lost love, and far-off home.
The drowsy mist before him chill and dank,
Like a dull lethargy o'erleans the sea,
When he rows on against the utter blank,
Steering as if to dim eternity,-
Like Love's frail ghost departing with the dawn;
A failing shadow in the twilight drawn.
or nothing but a faint And failing image in the eye of thought; That mocks his model with an after-paint, And stains an atom like the shape she sought; Then with her earnest vows she hopes to fee The old and hoary majesty of sea.
"O King of waves, and brother of high Jove,
Preserve my sumless venture there afloat;
A woman's heart, and its whole wealth of love,
Are all embarked upon that little boat;
Nay, but two loves, two lives, a double fate
A perilous voyage for so dear a freight.
"If impious mariners be stained with crime,
Shake not in awful rage thy hoary locks,
Lay by thy storms until another time,
Lest my frail bark be dashed against the rocks:
Or rather smoothe thy deeps that he may fly
Like Love himself, upon a seeming sky!
"Let all thy herded monsters sleep beneath,
Nor gore him with crooked tusks, or wreathéd horns;
Let no fierce sharks destroy him with their teeth,
Nor spine-fish wound him with their venomed thorns;
But if he faint, and timely succor lack,
Let ruthful dolphins rest him on their back.
"Let no false dimpling whirlpools suck him in,
Nor slimy quicksands smother his sweet breath;
Let no jagged corals tear his tender skin,
Nor mountain billows bury him in death; "-
And with that thought forestalling her own fears,
She drowned his painted image in her tears.
By this, the climbing sun, with rest repaired
Looked through the gold embrasures of the sky,
And asked the drowsy world how she had fared;
The drowsy world shone brightened in reply;
And smiling off her fogs, his slanting beam
Spied young Leander in the middle stream.
His face was pallid, but the hectic morn
Had hung a lying crimson on his cheeks,
And slanderous sparkles in his eyes forlorn;
So death lies ambushed in consumptive streaks;
But inward grief was writhing o'er its task,
As heart-sick jesters weep behind the mask.
He thought of Hero and the lost delight,
Her last embracings, and the space between;
He thought of Hero and the future night,
Her speechless rapture and enamored mien,
When, lo! before him, scarce two galleys' space,
His thoughts confronted with another face!
Her aspect's like a moon divinely fair,
But makes the midnight darker that it lies on;
'Tis so beclouded with her coal-black hair
That densely skirts her luminous horizon,
Making her doubly fair, thus darkly set,
As marble lies advantaged upon jet.
She's all too bright, too argent, and too pale,
To be a woman; but a woman's double,
Reflected on the wave so faint and frail,
She tops the billows like an air-blown bubble;
Or dim creation of a morning dream,
Fair as the wave-bleached lily of the stream.
The very rumor strikes his seeing dead:
Great beauty like great fear first stuns the sense:
He knows not if her lips be blue or red,
Nor of her eyes can give true evidence :
Like murder's witness swooning in the court,
His sight falls senseless by its own report.
Anon resuming, it declares her eyes
Are tinct with azure, like two crystal wells
That drink the blue complexion of the skies,
Or pearls out-peeping from their silvery shells:
Her polished brow, it is an ample plain,
To lodge vast contemplations of the main.
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