to and fro,
    And tossing their great giant shrouds of snow
    Over her deck.  Ahead, and there is seen
    A black, strange line of breakers, down between
    The awful surges, lifting up their manes,
    Like great sea lions.  Quick and high she strains
    Her foaming keel—­that solitary ship! 
    As if, in all her frenzy, she would leap
    The cursed barrier; forward, fast and fast—­
    Back, back she reels; her timbers and her mast
    Split in a thousand shivers!  A white spring
    Of the exulted sea rose bantering
    Over her ruin; and the mighty crew,
    That mann’d her decks, were seen, a straggling few,
    Far scatter’d on the surges.  Julio felt
    The impulse of that hour, and low he knelt,
    Within his own light bark—­a prayful man! 
    And clasp’d his lifeless bride; and to her wan,
    Cold cheek did lay his melancholy brow.—­
    “Save thou a mariner!” He starteth now
    To hear that dying cry; and there is one,
    All worn and wave-wet, by his bark anon,
    Clinging, in terror of the ireful sea,
    A fair hair’d mariner!  But suddenly
    He saw the pale dead ladye, by a flame
    Of blue and livid lightning, and there came
    Over his features blindness, and the power
    Of his strong hands grew weak,—­a giant shower
    Of foam rose up, and swept him far along;
    And Julio saw him buffeting the throng
    Of the great eddying waters, till they went
    Over him—­a wind-shaken cerement!

    Then terribly he laugh’d, and rose above
    His soul-less bride—­the ladye of his love
    Lifting him up, in all his wizard glee;
    And he did wave, before the frantic sea,
    His wasted arm.  “Adieu! adieu! adieu! 
    Thou sawest how we were; thou sawest, too,
    Thou wert not so; for in the inmost shrine
    Of my deep heart are thoughts that are not thine. 
    And thou art gone, fair mariner! in foam
    And music-murmurs, to thy blessed home—­
    Adieu! adieu!  Thou sawest how that she
    Sleeps in her holy beauty, tranquilly;
    And when the fair and floating vision breaks
    From her pure brow, and Agathe awakes—­
    Till then, we meet not; so adieu, adieu!”
    Still on before the sullen tempest flew,
    Fast as a meteor star, the lonely bark: 
    And Julio bent over to the dark,
    The solitary sea, for close beside
    Floated the stringed harp of one that died
    In that wild shipwreck, and he drew it home,
    With madness, to his bosom:  the white foam
    Was o’er its strings; and on the streaming sail
    He wiped them, running, with his fingers pale,
    Along the tuneless notes, that only gave
    Seldom responses to his wandering stave!

    TO THE HARP

    I

    Jewel! that lay before the heart
      Of some romantic boy,
    And startled music in her home,
      Of mystery and joy!