A rosary of stars, love! a prayer as we glide,
    And a whisper in the wind, and a murmur on the tide! 
    And we’ll say a fair adieu to the flowers that are seen,
    With shells of silver sown in radiancy between.

    A rosary of stars, love! the purest they shall be,
    Like spirits of pale pearls, in the bosom of the sea;
    Now help thee, virgin mother! with a blessing as we go,
    Upon the laughing waters, that are wandering below!

He lifted the dead girl, and is away
To where a light boat, in its moorings lay,
Like a sea-cradle, rocking to the hush
Of the nurse waters.  With a frantic rush
O’er the wild field of tangles he hath sped,
And through the shoaling waves that fell and fled
Upon the furrow’d beach.

                             The snowy sail
    Is hoisted to the gladly gushing gale,
    That bosom’d its fair canvass with a breast
    Of silver, looking lovely to the west;
    And at the helm there sits the wither’d one,
    Gazing and gazing on the sister nun,
    With her fair tresses floating on his knee—­
    The beautiful, death-stricken Agathe!

Fast, fast, and far away, the bark hath stood
Out toward the great heaving solitude,
That gurgled in its deeps, as if the breath
Went through its lungs, of agony and death!

    The sun is lost within the labyrinth
    Of clouds of purple and pale hyacinth,
    That are the frontlet of the sister Sky
    Kissing her brother Ocean; and they lie
    Bathing in blushes, till the rival queen
    Night, with her starry tiar, floateth in—­
    A dark and dazzling beauty! that doth draw
    Over the light of love a shade of awe
    Most strange, that parts our wonder not the less
    Between her mystery and loveliness!

    And she is there, that is a pyramid
    Whereon the stars, the statues of the dead,
    Are imaged over the eternal hall,
    A group of radiances majestical! 
    And Julio looks up, and there they be,
    And Agathe, and all the waste of Sea,
    That slept in wizard slumber, with a shroud
    Of night flung o’er his bosom, throbbing proud
    Amid its azure pulses; and again
    He dropt his blighted eye-orbs, with a strain
    Of mirth upon the ladye:—­Agathe! 
    Sweet bride! be thou a queen, and I will lay
    A crown of sea-weed on thy royal brow;
    And I will twine these tresses, that are now
    Floating beside me, to a diadem;
    And the sea foam will sprinkle gem on gem,
    And so will the soft dews.  Be thou the queen
    Of the unpeopled waters, sadly seen
    By star-light, till the yet unrisen moon
    Issue, unveiled, from her anderoon,
    To bathe in the sea fountains:  let me say,
    “Hail—­hail to thee! thrice hail, my Agathe!”