“Ah, next I think
Upon the merchant captain, stout of heart
To dare and to endure.  ‘Robert,’ saith he,
(The navigator Knox to his manful son,)
’I sit a captive from the ship detained;
This heathenry doth let thee visit her. 
Remember, son, if thou, alas! shouldst fail
To ransom thy poor father, they are free
As yet, the mariners; have wives at home,
As I have; ay, and liberty is sweet
To all men.  For the ship, she is not ours,
Therefore, ’beseech thee, son, lay on the mate
This my command, to leave me, and set sail. 
As for thyself—­’ ‘Good father,’ saith the son;
’I will not, father, ask your blessing now,
Because, for fair, or else for evil, fate
We two shall meet again.’  And so they did. 
The dusky men, peeling off cinnamon,
And beating nutmeg clusters from the tree,
Ransom and bribe contemned.  The good ship sailed,—­
The son returned to share his father’s cell.

“O, there are many such.  Would I had wit
Their worth to sing!” With that, she turned her feet,
“I am tired now,” said Gladys, “of their talk
Around this hill Parnassus.”  And, behold,
A piteous sight—­an old, blind, graybeard king
Led by a fool with bells.  Now this was loved
Of the crowd below the hill; and when he called
For his lost kingdom, and bewailed his age,
And plained on his unkind daughters, they were known
To say, that if the best of gold and gear
Could have bought him back his kingdom, and made kind
The hard hearts which had broken his erewhile,
They would have gladly paid it from their store
Many times over.  What is done is done,
No help.  The ruined majesty passed on. 
And look you! one who met her as she walked
Showed her a mountain nymph lovely as light
Her name Oenone; and she mourned and mourned,
“O Mother Ida,” and she could not cease,
No, nor be comforted.

And after this,
Soon there came by, arrayed in Norman cap
And kirtle, an Arcadian villager,
Who said, “I pray you, have you chanced to meet
One Gabriel?” and she sighed; but Gladys took
And kissed her hand:  she could not answer her,
Because she guessed the end.

With that it drew
To evening; and as Gladys wandered on
In the calm weather, she beheld the wave,
And she ran down to set her feet again
On the sea margin, which was covered thick
With white shell-skeletons.  The sky was red
As wine.  The water played among bare ribs
Of many wrecks, that lay half buried there
In the sand.  She saw a cave, and moved thereto
To ask her way, and one so innocent
Came out to meet her, that, with marvelling mute,
She gazed and gazed into her sea-blue eyes,
For in them beamed the untaught ecstasy
Of childhood, that lives on though youth be come,
And love just born.