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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.

And soon is gone, 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.

Her lips might corals scem, but corals near,
Stray through her hair like blossoms on a bower;
And o'er the weaker red still domineer,

And make it pale by tribute to more power;
Her rounded cheeks are of still paler hue,
Touched by the bloom of water, tender blue.

Thus he beholds her rocking on the water,
Under the glossy umbrage of her hair,
Like pearly Amphitrite's fairest daughter,
Naiad, or Nereid, or Siren fair,
Mislodging music in her pitiless breast,
A nightingale within a falcon's nest.

They say there be such maidens in the deep,
Charming poor mariners, that all too near
By mortal lullabios fall dead asleep,

As drowsy men are poisoned through the ear;
Therefore Leander's fears begin to urge,
This snowy swan is come to sing his dirge.

At which he falls into a deadly chill, ·
And strains his eyes upon her lips apart;

Fearing each breath to feel that prelude shrill,

Pierce through his marrow, like a breath-blown dart Shot sudden from an Indian's hollow cane,

With mortal venom fraught, and fiery pain.

Here, then, poor wretch, how he begins to crowd
A thousand thoughts within a pulse's space;
There seemed so brief a pause of life allowed,
His mind stretched universal, to embrace
The whole wide world, in an extreme farewell,-
A moment's musing- but an age to tell.

For there stood Hero, widowed at a glance,
The foreseen sum of many a tedious fact,
Pale cheeks, dim eyes, and withered countenance,
A wasted ruin that no wasting lacked;
Time's tragic consequents ere time began,
A world of sorrow in a tear-drop's span.

A moment's thinking is an hour in words,-
An hour of words is little for some woes;
Too little breathing a long life affords,
For love to paint itself by perfect shows;
Then let his love and grief unwronged lie dumb,
Whilst Fear, and that it fears, together come.

As when the crew, hard by some jutty cape,
Struck pale and panicked by the billows' roar,
Lay by all timely measures of escape,
And let their bark go driving on the shore;
So frayed Leander, drifting to his wreck,
Gazing on Scylla, falls upon her neck.

For he hath all forgot the swimmer's art,
The rower's cunning, and the pilot's skill,
Letting his arms fall down in languid part,
Swayed by the waves, and nothing by his will,
Till soon he jars against that glossy skin,
Solid like glass, though seemingly as thin.

Lo! how she startles at the warning shock
And straightway girds him to her radiant breast,
More like his safe smooth harbor than his rock;
Poor wretch, he is so faint and toil-opprest,
He cannot loose him from his grappling foe,
Whether for love or hate, she lets not go.

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