And he breathed deep, and he breathed long,
    And he greeted the heavenly delight of the day. 
  They gaze on each other—­they shout, as they throng—­
    “He lives—­lo the ocean has render’d its prey! 
  And safe from the whirlpool and free from the grave,
  Comes back to the daylight the soul of the brave!”

  And he comes, with the crowd in their clamor and glee,
    And the goblet his daring has won from the water,
  He lifts to the king as he sinks on his knee;—­
    And the king from her maidens has beckon’d his daughter—­
  She pours to the boy the bright wine which they bring,
  And thus spake the Diver—­“Long life to the king!

  “Happy they whom the rose-hues of daylight rejoice,
    The air and the sky that to mortals are given! 
  May the horror below never more find a voice—­
    Nor Man stretch too far the wide mercy of Heaven! 
  Never more—­never more may he lift from the sight
  The veil which is woven with Terror and Night!

  “Quick-brightening like lightning—­it tore me along,
    Down, down, till the gush of a torrent, at play
  In the rocks of its wilderness, caught me—­and strong
    As the wings of an eagle, it whirl’d me away. 
  Vain, vain was my struggle—­the circle had won me,
  Round and round in its dance, the wild element spun me.

  “And I call’d on my God, and my God heard my prayer
    In the strength of my need, in the gasp of my breath—­
  And show’d me a crag that rose up from the lair,
    And I clung to it, nimbly—­and baffled the death! 
  And, safe in the perils around me, behold
  On the spikes of the coral the goblet of gold!

  “Below, at the foot of the precipice drear,
    Spread the gloomy, and purple, and pathless Obscure! 
  A silence of Horror that slept on the ear,
    That the eye more appall’d might the Horror endure! 
  Salamander—­snake—­dragon—­vast reptiles that dwell
  In the deep-coil’d about the grim jaws of their hell.

  “Dark-crawl’d—­glided dark the unspeakable swarms,
    Clump’d together in masses, misshapen and vast—­
  Here clung and here bristled the fashionless forms—­
    Here the dark-moving bulk of the Hammer-fish pass’d—­
  And with teeth grinning white, and a menacing motion,
  Went the terrible Shark—­the Hyena of Ocean.

  “There I hung, and the awe gather’d icily o’er me,
    So far from the earth, where man’s help there was none! 
  The One Human Thing, with the Goblins before me—­
    Alone—­in a loneness so ghastly—­ALONE! 
  Fathom-deep from man’s eye in the speechless profound,
  With the death of the Main and the Monsters around.

  “Methought, as I gazed through the darkness, that now
    IT[8] saw—­the dread hundred-limbed creature-its prey! 
  And darted—­O God! from the far flaming-bough
    Of the coral, I swept on the horrible way;
  And it seized me, the wave with its wrath and its roar,
  It seized me to save—­King, the danger is o’er!”