XXXII.

She’s all too bright, too argent, and too pale,
To be a woman;—­but a woman’s double,
Reflected, on the wave so faint and frail,
She tops the billows like an air-blown bubble;
Or dim creation of a morning dream,
Fair as the wave-bleached lily of the stream.

XXXIII.

The very rumor strikes his seeing dead: 
Great beauty like great fear first stuns the sense: 
He knows not if her lips be blue or red,
Nor of her eyes can give true evidence: 
Like murder’s witness swooning in the court,
His sight falls senseless by its own report.

XXXIV.

Anon resuming, it declares her eyes
Are tint with azure, like two crystal wells
That drink the blue complexion of the skies,
Or pearls outpeeping from their silvery shells: 
Her polish’d brow, it is an ample plain,
To lodge vast contemplations of the main.

XXXV.

Her lips might corals seem, but corals near
Stray through her hair like blossoms on a bower;
And o’er the weaker red still domineer,
And make it pale by tribute to more power;
Her rounded cheeks are of still paler hue,
Touch’d by the bloom of water, tender blue.

XXXVI.

Thus he beholds her rocking on the water,
Under the glossy umbrage of her hair,
Like pearly Amphitrite’s fairest daughter,
Naiad, or Nereid,—­or Syren fair,
Mislodging music in her pitiless breast,
A nightingale within a falcon’s nest.

XXXVII.

They say there be such maidens in the deep,
Charming poor mariners, that all too near
By mortal lullabies fall dead asleep,
As drowsy men are poison’d through the ear;
Therefore Leander’s fears begin to urge,
This snowy swan is come to sing his dirge.

XXXVIII.

At which he falls into a deadly chill,
And strains his eyes upon her lips apart;
Fearing each breath to feel that prelude shrill,
Pierce through his marrow, like a breath-blown dart
Shot sudden from an Indian’s hollow cane,
With mortal venom fraught, and fiery pain.

XXXIX.

Here then, poor wretch, how he begins to crowd
A thousand thoughts within a pulse’s space;
There seem’d so brief a pause of life allow’d,
His mind stretch’d universal, to embrace
The whole wide world, in an extreme farewell,—­
A moment’s musing—­but an age to tell.

XL.

For there stood Hero, widow’d at a glance,
The foreseen sum of many a tedious fact,
Pale cheeks, dim eyes, and wither’d countenance,
A wasted ruin that no wasting lack’d;
Time’s tragic consequents ere time began,
A world of sorrow in a tear-drop’s span.