CXX.

For that the horrid deep has no sure path
To guide Love safe into his homely haven. 
And lo! the storm grows blacker in its wrath,
O’er the dark billow brooding like a raven,
That bodes of death and widow’s sorrowing,
Under the dusky covert of his wing.

CXXI.

And so day ended.  But no vesper spark
Hung forth its heavenly sign; but sheets of flame
Play’d round the savage features of the dark,
Making night horrible.  That night, there came
A weeping maiden to high Sestos’ steep,
And tore her hair and gazed upon the deep.

CXXII.

And waved aloft her bright and ruddy torch,
Whose flame the boastful wind so rudely fann’d,
That oft it would recoil, and basely scorch
The tender covert of her sheltering hand;
Which yet, for Love’s dear sake, disdain’d retire,
And, like a glorying martyr, braved the fire.

CXXIII.

For that was love’s own sign and beacon guide
Across the Hellespont’s wide weary space,
Wherein he nightly struggled with the tide:—­
Look what a red it forges on her face,
As if she blush’d at holding sucha light,
Ev’n in the unseen presence of the night!

CXXIV.

Whereas her tragic cheek is truly pale,
And colder than the rude and ruffian air
That howls into her ear a horrid tale
Of storm and wreck, and uttermost despair,
Saying, “Leander floats amid the surge,
And those are dismal waves that sing his dirge.”

CXXV.

And hark!—­a grieving voice, trembling and faint,
Blends with the hollow sobbings of the sea;
Like the sad music of a siren’s plaint,
But shriller than Leander’s voice should be,
Unless the wintry death had changed its tone,—­
Wherefore she thinks she hears his spirit moan.

CXXVI.

For now, upon each brief and breathless pause,
Made by the raging winds, it plainly calls
On “Hero!  Hero!”—­whereupon she draws
Close to the dizzy brink, that ne’er appals
Her brave and constant spirit to recoil,
However the wild billows toss and toil.

CXXVII.

“Oh! dost thou live under the deep deep sea? 
I thought such love as thine could never die;
If thou hast gain’d an immortality
From the kind pitying sea-god, so will I;
And this false cruel tide that used to sever
Our hearts, shall be our common home forever!”

CXXVIII.

“There we will sit and sport upon one billow,
And sing our ocean ditties all the day,
And lie together on the same green pillow,
That curls above us with its dewy spray;
And ever in one presence live and dwell,
Like two twin pearls within the selfsame shell!”