Classic Poem

There lived a diver once whose boast
Was that he brought up treasures lost,
However deep, beneath the sea
Of glossy-hair'd Parthenope.
To try him, people oft threw in
A silver cross or gold zecchin.
Down went the diver " fathoms nine",
And you might see the metal shine
Between his lips or on his head,
While lazy Tethys lay abed,
And not a Nereid round her heard
The green pearl-spangled curtain stirr'd.
One day a tempting fiend threw down,
Where whirl'd the waves, a tinsel crown,
And said, " O diver, you who dive
Deeper than any man alive,
And see, where other folks are blind,
And, what all others miss, can find,
You saw the splendid crown I threw
Into the whirlpool: now can you
Recover it? thus won, you may
Wear it . . not once, but every day,
So may your sons." Down, down he sprang . .
A hundred Nereids heard the clang,
And closed him round and held him fast . .
The diver there had dived his last.