THE MAIDEN’S LAMENT FOR HER SHIPWRECKED LOVER.
Reading edition
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BY WM. ALBERT SUTLIFFE.
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I heard a maiden by the tumid ocean—
The day had gone and night came on apace—
Chanting a hymn to the spray’s chiming motion,
Starlight and moonlight, and the sea’s dim face.
And, as the moon looked down, her song up-stealing
Fell thus upon my ear: “Hope of my hope,
Gone o’er the swelling waters, whence this feeling
That thou art dead? I give my fancy scope,
And see thee hideous, with Death’s image o’er
Those features I have loved, but know no more.
Hope of my hope, gone o’er the swelling ocean,
What cavern holds thy form—
Cast by the furious storm?
“Hope of my hope, gone o’er the swelling ocean!
I weep for thee when night is on the sea:
My bosom bursteth with its deep emotion—
My spirit stretcheth out its arms but finds not thee.
O misery! and then itself within itself retires,
And weeps away a night that has no morn;
And lights forever up fierce funeral pyres—
Dreaming of cypress wreaths, and things forlorn.
“What sea-nymph made thy bed
Beneath the briny waves?
Thetis with golden hair?
Panopea wondrous fair,
Lone virgin of the ocean’s deepest caves,
With filmy garments shred
About thy form,
Mock of the brumal storm?
Ho! mourn with me, ye nymphs, he is no more!
Go sound it, Triton, o’er the humid waters!
Go weep for him again, ye misty daughters!
Re-echo it, ye cliffs, along our shore!
And I myself will take the sad refrain
Of the elegiac strain,
And tune my lyre to a symphonious stream
Floating along with many a moony gleam,
Soft as an angel’s dream,
Over the foamy summit of each wave,
That rolleth o’er his grave.
“Well do I know the day
That bore him hence away!
I watched him from yon cliff, in joy departing:
I, with the tear-drops starting,
Wept that he thus should go.
He, hopeful of the future, saw not wo
In the dim cloud that gathered, and the spray
Leaped joyful up about his seaward way—
Leaped up the vessel’s sides with treacherous kiss;
Deceitful waves, that now in the abyss
Have whelmed my love’s proud form,
Play of the pitiless storm.
“I’ve wept until my tears
Have worn with furrows deep my pallid cheek;
Have gazed until my poor eyes, worn and weak,
Like age’s eyes, seem faded with long years.
Oh! the long, dreary nights I’ve passed alone!
Would Reason from her throne
Might flee, and bear with her this dim, dull grief—
This memory’s haunting tone!
Then might I have relief.
Receive me, ocean! lo, to thee I come!
I, too, will share thy home:
Our bridal bed shall be of pearls and diamonds,
First loved, last loved, and fondly loved forever.
No distance e’er shall sever—”
The voice was hushed; I sped me to the strand.
Only the moonlight fell; and o’er the sand
A fountain gushed, pure as our holiest dreams.
Perchance ’twas she, thus changed; how could I tell?
And gone, as Arethusa once, beneath the deep,
Had sought her lover in his quiet sleep.