| |
* * * * * BUT he, Leander, almost half across, | |
| Threw his blithe locks behind him with a toss, | |
| And hailed the light victoriously, secure | |
| Of clasping his kind love, so sweet and sure; | |
| When suddenly, a blast, as if in wrath, | 5 |
| Sheer from the hills, came headlong on his path; | |
| Then started off; and driving round the sea, | |
| Dashed up the panting waters roaringly. | |
| The youth at once was thrust beneath the main | |
| With blinded eyes, but quickly rose again, | 10 |
| And with a smile at heart, and stouter pride, | |
| Surmounted, like a god, the rearing tide. | |
| But what? The torch gone out! So long too! See, | |
| He thinks it comes! Ah, yes,—’t is she! ’t is she! | |
| Again he springs; and though the winds arise | 15 |
| Fiercer and fiercer, swims with ardent eyes; | |
| And always, though with ruffian waves dashed hard, | |
| Turns thither with glad groan his stout regard; | |
| And always, though his sense seems washed away, | |
| Emerges, fighting towards the cordial ray. | 20 |
| |
| But driven about at last, and drenched the while, | |
| The noble boy loses that inward smile. | |
| For now, from one black atmosphere, the rain | |
| Sweeps into stubborn mixture with the main; | |
| And the brute wind, unmuffling all its roar, | 25 |
| Storms; and the light, gone out, is seen no more. | |
| Then dreadful thoughts of death, of waves heaped on him, | |
| And friends and parting daylight rush upon him. | |
| He thinks of prayers to Neptune and his daughters, | |
| And Venus, Hero’s queen, sprung from the waters; | 30 |
| And then of Hero only,—how she fares, | |
| And what she ’ll feel, when the blank morn appears; | |
| And at that thought he stiffens once again | |
| His limbs, and pants, and strains, and climbs—in vain. | |
| Fierce draughts he swallows of the wilful wave, | 35 |
| His tossing hands are lax, his blind look grave, | |
| Till the poor youth (and yet no coward he) | |
| Spoke once her name, and, yielding wearily, | |
| Wept in the middle of the scornful sea. | |
| |
| I need not tell how Hero, when her light | 40 |
| Would burn no longer, passed that dreadful night; | |
| How she exclaimed, and wept, and could not sit | |
| One instant in one place; nor how she lit | |
| The torch a hundred times, and when she found | |
| ’T was all in vain, her gentle head turned round | 45 |
| Almost with rage; and in her fond despair | |
| She tried to call him through the deafening air. | |
| |
| But when he came not,—when from hour to hour | |
| He came not,—though the storm had spent its power, | |
| And when the casement, at the dawn of light, | 50 |
| Began to show a square of ghastly white, | |
| She went up to the tower, and straining out | |
| To search the seas, downwards, and round about, | |
| She saw at last,—she saw her lord indeed | |
| Floating, and washed about, like a vile weed;— | 55 |
| On which such strength of passion and dismay | |
| Seized her, and such an impotence to stay, | |
| That from the turret, like a stricken dove, | |
| With fluttering arms she leaped, and joined her drowned love. | |
| |
