rash one to the grave!     "False Pontus! and the calm I hailed, The awaiting murder darkly veiled—     The lulled pellucid flow, The smiles in which thou wert arrayed, Were but the snares that love betrayed To thy false realm below! Now in the midway of the main, Return relentlessly forbidden, Thou loosenest on the path beyond The horrors thou hadst hidden."     Loud and more loud the tempest raves In thunder break the mountain waves, White-foaming on the rock—    No ship that ever swept the deep Its ribs of gnarled oak could keep Unshattered by the shock. Dies in the blast the guiding torch To light the struggler to the strand;    'Tis death to battle with the wave, And death no less to land! On Venus, daughter of the seas, She calls the tempest to appease—     To each wild-shrieking wind Along the ocean-desert borne, She vows a steer with golden horn—     Vain vow—relentless wind! On every goddess of the deep, On all the gods in heaven that be, She calls—to soothe in calm, awhile The tempest-laden sea!     "Hearken the anguish of my cries! From thy green halls, arise—arise, Leucothoe the divine! Who, in the barren main afar, Oft on the storm-beat mariner Dost gently-saving shine. Oh,—reach to him thy mystic veil, To which the drowning clasp may cling, And safely from that roaring grave, To shore my lover bring!"     And now the savage winds are hushing. And o'er the arched horizon, blushing, Day's chariot gleams on high! Back to their wonted channels rolled, In crystal calm the waves behold One smile on sea and sky! All softly breaks the rippling tide, Low-murmuring on the rocky land, And playful wavelets gently float A corpse upon the strand!     'Tis he!—who even in death would still Not fail the sweet vow to fulfil; She looks—sees—knows him there! From her pale lips no sorrow speaks, No tears glide down her hueless cheeks; Cold-numbed in her despair—    She looked along the silent deep, She looked upon the brightening heaven, Till to the marble face the soul Its light sublime had given!     "Ye solemn powers men shrink to name, Your might is here, your rights ye claim—     Yet think not I repine Soon closed my course; yet I can bless The life that brought me happiness—     The fairest lot was mine! Living have I thy temple served, Thy consecrated priestess been—    My last glad offering now receive Venus, thou mightiest queen!"     Flashed the white robe along the air, And from the tower that beetled there She sprang into the wave; Roused from his throne beneath the waste, Those holy forms the god embraced—     A god himself their grave!    

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