The warrior world was lifting to the bent
    Of his eternal brow magnificent,
    The fiery moon, that in her blazonry
    Shone eastward, like a shield.  The throbbing sea
    Felt fever on his azure arteries,
    That shadow’d them with crimson, while the breeze
    Fell faster on the solitary sail. 
    But the red moon grew loftier and pale,
    And the great ocean, like the holy hall,
    Where slept a seraph host maritimal,
    Was gorgeous, with wings of diamond
    Fann’d over it, and millions beyond
    Of tiny waves were playing to and fro,
    All musical, with an incessant flow
    Of cadences, innumerably heard
    Between the shrill notes of a hermit bird,
    That held a solemn paean to the moon.

    A few devotional fair clouds were soon
    Breathed o’er the living countenance of Heaven,
    And under the great galaxies were driven
    Of stars that group’d together, and they went
    Like voyagers along the firmament,
    And grew to silver in the blessed light
    Of the moon alchymist.  It was not night,
    Not the dark deathly shadow, that falls o’er
    The eye-lid like a curse, but far before
    In splendour, struggling through a fall of gloom,
    In many a myriad gushes, that do come
    Direct from the eternal stars beyond,
    Like holy fountains pouring diamond!

    A sail! awake thee, Julio! a sail! 
    And be not bending to thy trances pale. 
    But he is gazing on the moonlit brow
    Of his dead Agathe, and fondly now,
    The light is silvering her bloodless face
    And the cold grave-clothes.  There is loveliness
    As in a marble image, very bright! 
    But stricken with a phantasy of light
    That is not given to the mortal hue,
    To life and breathing beauty:  and she too
    Is more of the expressless lineament,
    Than of the golden thoughts that came and went
    Over her features like a living tide
    No while before.

                    A sail is on the wide
    And moving waters, and it draweth nigh
    Like a sea-cloud.  The elfin billows fly
    Before it, in their armories enthrall’d
    Of radiant and moon-breasted emerald;
    And many is the mariner that sees
    The lone boat in the melancholy breeze,
    Waving her snowy canvass, and anon
    Their stately vessel with a gallant run
    Crowds by in all her glory; but the cheer
    Of men is pass’d into a sudden fear,
    And whisperings, and shakings of the head—­
    The moon was streaming on a virgin dead,
    And Julio sat over her insane,
    Like a sea demon!  O’er and o’er again,
    Each cross’d him, as the stately vessel stood
    Far out into the murmuring solitude!

    But Julio saw not; he only heard
    A rushing, like the passing of a bird,
    And felt him heaving on the foam, that flew
    Along the startled billows; and he knew
    Of a strange sail, by broken oaths that fell
    Beside him, on the coming of the swell.