Classic Poem

Every word of the garrulous monk
Into the maiden's sad heart sunk,
With a dreary plunge and spasm
Sinking through the aching chasm,
As desperate shapes of agony
Leap from a burning ship at sea!
And as she gazed on the lovers there,
Every hope in her breast of despair —
Hopes which until now unknown
Had thronged her heart, with a sigh and a groan
Dropt away through the dusky waves
Low and lower to their briny graves,
With downward face and wide-spread hair!

Was it Love — or was it Hate —
The hate of bitter Jealousy —
Or conscious of being desolate —
Or was it the combined three
That thrilled the maiden suddenly,
Like variant winds that stir and wake
The waters of a summer lake?

" See! " said the lady with a glance of glee,
" How the dear child looks at us!
Why stares she so? Why breathes she thus?
As if her heart were parching to dust
In a roaring and raging furnace-gust!
Ah, Roland, it is plain to see
This is all for the love of thee!

" Oh, it is a pity and shame
To see a young heart thus consumed —
Even though it burns self-doomed
In an unrequited flame! "
Thus speaking, the lady with looks of pity,
Woke the prelude of a strange wild ditty;
Touching the lute with a gentler sweep,
She poured from her bosom, full and deep,
A burst of song that rose and fell
With a heavy and heated and stifling swell,
As fanned from a tropical garden in bloom
By the sultry wings of a far simoom!

" A princess dwelt beneath the sea,
In a palace of coral and pearl; —
Her liquid chambers wide and free
Were lined with soft green tapestry,
Where a thousand suitors bent the knee;
But her lip wore a scornful curl.

" There day by day she seemed to pine,
In her palace of coral and pearl; —
Thronging the halls of the crystal brine,
In vain they came in a flattering line,
With the wealth of every Indian mine,
King, Prince and Duke and Earl.

" But her heart was wandering far away
From her palace of coral and pearl; —
Seeking the realm of the upper day,
Sighing as April sighs for May,
Through her emerald roof she saw the ray,
Like a flag at morn, unfurl.

" For she, like many a princess before,
In her palace of coral and pearl,
Had dreamed of one on a foreign shore,
The only one her soul could adore,
And thither her thoughts went more and more,
Till her weary brain 'gan whirl!

" " I pine," she cried, " alone, alone!"
In her palace of coral and pearl: —
" I pine and perish where hope is none!
Would I were sailing with the sun,
Would that the home of my love were won,
Though he spurned me like a churl!

" " But like a dull sea-weed I cling
To this palace of coral and pearl! —
Though round me the crystal alcoves ring
With praises my syren subjects sing,
Yet hopeless I pine as he were a king,
And I a poor peasant-girl!" "

She ceased; but ere the sound had passed,
The skippers' voice, like a rattling blast
Blown through empty spar and shroud,
Announcing the tempest-bearing cloud,
Took up the strain, while he pressed the helm,
Still looking the lord of the watery realm;
And as he sung the instrument
Its wild accompanying cadence lent: —

A monarch reigned beneath the sea
On the wreck of a myriad thrones, —
The collected ruins of Tyranny,
Shattered by the hand of Destiny,
And scattered abroad with maniac glee,
Like a gibbeted pirate's bones.

" Alone, supreme, he reigned apart,
On the throne of a myriad thrones, —
Where sitting close to the world's red heart,
Which pulsed swift heat through his ocean mart,
He could hear each heavy throe and start,
As she heaved her earthquake groans.

" He gazed through the shadowy deep which shields
His throne of a myriad thrones, —
And saw the many variant keels
Driving over the watery fields,
Some with thunderous and flashing wheels
Linking the remotest zones.

" Oft, like an eagle that swoops in air,
He saw from his throne of thrones,
The winged anchors with eager stare
Leap midway down to the ocean's lair —
While hanging plummets gazed in despair
At the unreached sands and stones!

" Along his realm lie mountainous bulks,
The tribute to his throne of thrones, —
The merchant's and the pirate's hulks, —
And where the ghost of the slaver skulks,
Counting his cargo, — then swears and sulks
Among the manacled bones!

" His navy numbers many a bark,
The pride of his throne of thrones: —
Golden by day and fiery by dark,
Each cleaves his pathway like a shark!
But his favourite barge is a dragon-ark,
The fairest ship he owns!

" The voice of that princess beneath the sea
Reached to his throne of thrones; —
Then he leaped in his barge right gallantly —
And cried, " My child, come sail with me,
We will flash to sunward far and free,
Till love for thy grief atones!" "

The skipper ceased. 'Twas but a lull
In the gale of song! With bosom full
As some gigantic organ-bellows,
Worked by the hands of officious fellows,
While the priest at the altar white
Is slowly chanting a sacred rite,
The monk burst forth with a gusty roar,
That seemed to echo along the shore: —

" An abbot dwelt beneath the sea
In a cloister of shell and weed; —
Its walls of curious masonry
Were built by the ocean peasantry,
Those merman slaves, whose supple knee
Loves best a mysterious creed.

" And he was so virtuous, the story runs,
In his cloister of shell and weed —
That the pious mermen, fathers and sons,
Their daughters and sisters, the fairest ones,
Brought to his charge, till a thousand nuns
Chanted his mystical creed.

" And he had control of a thousand friars,
In his cloister of shell and weed; —
He taught them to chasten all worldly desires,
To smother with prayer all carnal fires; —
Not to be drunkards, and not to be liars,
Or gluttons of boundless greed!

" And warned them, — but this was a slander base, —
In his cloister of shell and weed, —
Not to be like that earthly race
Who had brought the system into disgrace,
Till the Devil himself grew red in the face
At sins he had never decreed!

" This abbot heard, through the sedgy grate
Of his cloister of shell and weed,
The woful princess bewailing her fate,
Then saw the approaching barge of state —
And closing his missal and locking his gate,
He leaped aboard with speed.

" A scion of Church and State was he,
In his cloister of shell and weed, —
And well he knew if a wedding should be,
That he as chief prelate under the sea,
Must be there to perform the solemn decree,
To sign and to seal the deed! "