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Out of the little belfry near,
A bell, with accents loud and clear,
Poured its pious peal abroad,
To turn the thoughts of men to God.
Far and wide through the valley round
Sailed the silver wings of sound,--
Like a flock of doves rung out,
Wheeling joyfully about,
Flashing from their pinions white
A sense of quiet and delight.

The lady, as before a shrine
Suddenly called to thoughts divine,
Dropt upon her knees straightway,
With hanging head that seemed to pray.
And as one who stumbles with a curse and a groan,
The monk fell in the pathway prone,
And lay, like a statue overthrown;
Muttering harshly to the air
Something that passed for a hurried prayer.


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Page 107
And when the bell was done, he rose
Red in the face as a furnace glows--
And cried, "Now, hang that sacristan!
What pious crank has got into the man,
Thus to be ringing a vesper tune
In the very middle of afternoon?
It takes one down so unawares
That one can scarcely remember his prayers!
And besides, we have an old tradition,
Which may be merely superstition,
That when one kneels and forgets his prayer,
The Devil is also kneeling there!"

The crowd gave way as the party neared:
And much they marvelled at the friar's beard,
Hanging so long with crispy flow,
Like a winter hemlock's barb of snow.
But when with wondering eyes they saw
The lady, they held their breath with awe,

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Transfixed and speechless with the sense
Of beauty's rare magnificence.
All bared their brows as she passed between,
Bowing like subjects to a queen.
The monk straightway regained his mood,
And blessed the courteous multitude;
For he thought such deference alone could be
Paid to his age and piety.

When the lady beheld the maid
In her tawdry veil of flowers arrayed,
She pressed her with a warm embrace;
And smoothing the wild locks from her face,
Printed a kiss upon her brow,
Which brought to her forehead the crimson glow,
As if smitten by the sudden blow
Of a fiery hand! Then said, in accents gay,
"Come, my sweet friend, come away,--
You must go with us to-day.

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Under the shadowy sail we'll sit,
While our fairy bark shall flit
Like a swallow that stoops to lave
Its burnished bosom in the wave,
Just tipping with its airy breast
The enamoured billow's eager crest!"

Straightway, without more remark,
The jubilant party gained the bark.
Then the monk came to the bow,
And overleaning the dragon prow,
A moment anxiously scanned the crowd,
And cried, in a voice of mirth aloud,
"Who is there here so loves the sea
That he will bear us company?
One who knows the billowy realm,
To trim the sail and to set the helm?
Who will man our little ship
For a three-hours' pleasure trip?"

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Up stepped the fisherman; but ere
His feet had touched the slanting plank,
He staggered back, and shuddering sank,
Like one who swoons with sudden fear!
Then shouldering his way till he gained the sand,
A withered sailor, wrinkled and tanned,
Holding a piece of a helm in his hand,
And twitching his waistband with swaggering air,
Cried, "Avast there, my hearty!
While I'm of your party,
You'll scarcely be wanting these land-lubbers there!
Oh, ho! I'll be bound
That you thought I was drowned,
Because I plunged overboard into the dark!
But with this stout piece of helm,
What sea could o'erwhelm
A sailor who fears neither billow nor shark?--
Who on a fragment of wreck
Sits as safe as on deck,
And brings it to shore like a well-guided bark?"


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The lady laughed with joy insane
When she beheld the skipper again.
With a bound and a leap, he cleared the side
And strode the deck with his former pride:
Once more he leaned against the helm--
Once more he was lord of the watery realm!


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Page 112
V.
THE cable was loosed--the bark was free,
And like a white sea-bird, it flew to the sea.
Of all the shapes that swim
Through the ether blue and dim,
Or over the swinging ocean skim,
With their lifted plumes for sails
Set before the summer gales--
Or on enchanted lakes the swan,--
Or the swift wind-footed fawn,
None might with that fairy bark compare,
Less in the water than in the air,
As she sped from shore through a track of foam,
With the sudden joy and speed

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Of the carrier-bird when its wings are freed
And it darts from its alien tower for home!
Flying away with its white sail full,
It doubled the headland like a gull,
That, careening suddenly, seems to dip
In the flashing brine its white wing's tip.
Then up and down the coast it bore--
In and out, as it would explore
The hundred inlets of the shore!

With all her garments fluttering wild,
On the deck the fisherman's child
Stood by the lady, who proudly sat
On a little throne--where an Indian mat
Mantled the floor, like a flowery moss
Where Mab and her fairies gambol and toss,
And covered with figures of strange device,
And scented with odours of orient spice,
Which rose like an incense heavy and sweet
When the lady stirred her delicate feet.


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The maiden stood robbing her own bright hair
To garland the lady's locks less fair:
The scarlet wreath seemed a brighter red
As it gilded the braids of that darker head,--
And the poisonous berries livelier shone
Like crimson embers newly blown.
It seemed a chaplet fit for Fame
To bind on the brazen brow of Shame,
The guerdon of deeds which have no name!--
Like Evening wreathed with sunset flame,
The lady sat; and in her eyes,
Like shadows which the day defies,
Nursed by the darkness, there seemed to rise
Thoughts which on the black wings fly
Of sin-engendered mystery!

Still humming a scrap of maniac tune,
The maiden stood, like frenzied May,
At the close of her last sweet day
Casting all her blossoms away

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Into the burning lap of June!
Stripping herself of every flower
She shed them all, a fiery shower,
Over the lady, till she was as bright
As a statue decked with lamps at night,--
Those little lamps of various hue,
Scarlet, purple, green, and blue,
Which in myriads star the dark
In a royal festive park.

Many a venomous brier and burr
Among the rest she gave to her:--
There were slips of hemlock, tips of fir,
Mingled with leaves of juniper;
Monkshood flower and mandragore,
Henbane rank and hellebore,
And nightshade breathing deadly malice;
And there was the foxglove's purple chalice
Full of bane; but which, 'tis said,
Hath power to thrill and move the dead.


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And there, like goblets brimming red
Stolen from a demon's palace,
Shone the poppies, flaming bright;
And those which had a withered look
At the lady's touch fresh vigour took,
As if it did their lives renew
With a taste of their own noxious dew;
Even as stars that wilt in the light
Revive again in the lap of Night,--
Thus each, like Mars, refreshed with fire,
Flamed where they lay; while high and higher,
Heaving with a strange desire,
The lady's breast 'gan swell; and she
Kissed the maid with unwonted glee,--
The maid who, without a blossom left,
Looked scarce less lovely thus bereft,--
While the other shone as gorgeous and gay
As if she were decked for a queen of May
In a fiery tropic far away!


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Page 117
VI.
LOW at her feet pale Roland sat,
Gazing up in her radiant face;
And said, "In such a time and place
How sweet were song, did thy voice but grace
The air with melody!"' Whereat
The crownéd lady smiled, and sent
Her glance to a little instrument
Which a crimson cord made fast
Up at the side of the polished mast;
And without further sign or command,
Roland placed it in her hand.

It was a curious instrument,
A kind of Persian mandolin,

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Found perchance in an Arab's tent,
With every manner of gem besprent,
And wrought with all that tracery
Which Eastern art is cunning in:
The body was ribbed like a shell of the sea,
Yet black, and burnished as ebony;
The graceful neck was long and thin,
Where the cords ran up to golden keys;
And it looked as it had only been
Waked to mysterious melodies,
On phantom lakes and enchanted seas,
Flashing to fingers weird and wan,
In the minstrel ages lost and gone.

Waiting to hear the wakened late,
The very air and the sea hung mute;
And the maiden, breathless with listening desire,
Crouched silently down at the side of the friar.
The lady's fingers, like swift wings,
Over the flashing cordage stirred,

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Till music, like an answering bird,
Suddenly leaped from out the strings.
Round and round the cadence flew,
Sailing aloft and dropping low,
Now soaring with the wild sea-mew,
Flushing its breast in the sunset glow,
Then slowly dropping down the air,
Wailing with a wild despair,
Down and down,
Till it seemed to drown,
With wide pinions on the brine,
Weltering with no living sign,
Till the listener's pitying eye
Wept that so fair a thing should die.
Then with malicious laughter loud,
Jeering the sighing hearer's grief,
In a moment wild and brief,
Filling the air with mockery,
It leapt to the sky and pierced the cloud,
Soaring and soaring, till it seemed to be

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Climbing to the airy throne,
Where the Thunder sits alone. 

Roland listened, confused, amazed,
While an unknown frenzy thrilled his heart;
And Agatha on the lady gazed
With steadfast eyes and lips apart;
And there sat the friar smoothing his beard,
As into the maiden's eyes he peered
With a sidelong sinister glance;
While she, as one in a charméd trance,
Bending forward, could only see
Roland leaning on the lady's knee,
With pale, bewildered countenance,
Gazing up in her face, which beamed
As if a torchlight on it gleamed;
And flushed as with an orient wine,
Where passion's swift and fitful flame
On the breath of music went and came
Like a gusty blaze on a heathen shrine.


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"'Tis a sight to make a graybeard feel,"
Exclaimed the monk, "his old heart reel,
E'en though it beats in the breast of a friar!
Old age is a rust which may conceal;
But under it there is the tempered steel
Holding its latent spark of fire.

"See how he looks in the lady's face,
And how her dark eyes gloat on him!
In each other's soul they gaze, and trace
Thoughts which to us are vague and dim.

"Ah me! it recalls that hour divine,
In a palace garden at day's decline,
When a youth beneath a Sicilian vine
Sat with a lady, and she was crowned
With scarlet flowers and leaves embrowned,
Even as they had been seared to death
In the hot sirocco of passion's breath!

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Oh, how she played! The hours were drowned
In goblets of music, and love, and wine!
But, well-a-day!--for that same sin
The youth became a Capuchin!"


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Page 123
VII.
EVERY word of the garrulous monk
Into the maiden's sad heart sunk,
With a dreary plunge and spasm
Sinking through the aching chasm,
As desperate shapes of agony
Leap from a burning ship at sea!
And as she gazed on the lovers there,
Every hope in her breast of despair--
Hopes which until now unknown
Had thronged her heart, with a sigh and a groan
Dropt away through the dusky waves
Low and lower to their briny graves,
With downward face and wide-spread hair!


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Was it Love--or was it Hate--
The hate of bitter Jealousy--
Or conscious of being desolate--
Or was it the combinéd three
That thrilled the maiden suddenly,
Like variant winds that smite and wake
The waters of a summer lake?

"See!" said the lady with a glance of glee,
"How the dear child looks at us!
Why stares she so? Why breathes she thus?
As if her heart were parching to dust
In a roaring and raging furnace-gust!
Ah, Roland, it is plain to see
This is all for the love of thee!

"Oh, it is a pity and shame
To see a young heart thus consumed--
Even though it burns self-doomed
In an unrequited flame!"


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Thus speaking, the lady with looks of pity,
Woke the prelude of a strange wild ditty;
Touching the lute with a gentler sweep,
She poured from her bosom, full and deep,
A burst of song that rose and fell
With a heavy and heated and stifling swell,
As fanned from a tropical garden in bloom
By the sultry wings of a far simoom!

"A princess dwelt beneath the sea,
In a palace of coral and pearl;--
Her liquid chambers wide and free
Were lined with soft green tapestry,
Where a thousand suitors bent the knee;
But her lip wore a scornful curl.

"There day by day she seemed to pine,
In her palace of coral and pearl;--
Thronging the halls of the crystal brine,
In vain they came in a flattering line,

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With the wealth of every Indian mine,
King, Prince and Duke and Earl.

"But her heart was wandering far away
From her palace of coral and pearl;--
Seeking the realm of the upper day,
Sighing as April sighs for May,
Through her emerald roof she saw the ray,
Like a flag at morn, unfurl.

"For she, like many a princess before,
In her palace of coral and pearl,
Had dreamed of one on a foreign shore,
The only one her soul could adore,
And thither her thoughts went more and more,
Till her weary brain 'gan whirl!

"'I pine,' she cried, 'alone, alone!'
In her palace of coral and pearl:--
'I pine and perish where hope is none!

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Would I were sailing with the sun,
Would that the home of my love were won,
Though he spurned me like a churl!

"'But like a dull sea-weed I cling
To this palace of coral and pearl!--
Though round me the crystal alcoves ring
With praises my syren subjects sing,
Yet hopeless I pine as he were a king,
And I a poor peasant-girl!"'

She ceased; but ere the sound had passed,
The skippers' voice, like a rattling blast
Blown through empty spar and shroud,
Announcing the tempest-bearing cloud,
Took up the strain, while he pressed the helm,
Still looking the lord of the watery realm;
And as he sung the instrument
Its wild accompanying cadence lent:--


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"A monarch reigned beneath the sea
On the wreck of a myriad thrones,--
The collected ruins of Tyranny,
Shattered by the hand of Destiny,
And scattered abroad with maniac glee,
Like a gibbeted pirate's bones.

"Alone, supreme, he reigned apart,
On the throne of a myriad thrones,--
Where sitting close to the world's red heart,
Which pulsed swift heat through his ocean mart,
He could hear each heavy throe and start,
As she heaved her earthquake groans.

"He gazed through the shadowy deep which shields
His throne of a myriad thrones,--
And saw the many variant keels
Driving over the watery fields,
Some with thunderous and flashing wheels
Linking the remotest zones.


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"Oft, like an eagle that swoops in air,
He saw from his throne of thrones,
The wingéd anchors with eager stare
Leap midway down to the ocean's lair--
While hanging plummets gazed in despair
At the unreached sands and stones!

"Along his realm lie mountainous bulks,
The tribute to his throne of thrones,--
The merchant's and the pirate's hulks,--
And where the ghost of the slaver skulks,
Counting his cargo,--then swears and sulks
Among the manacled bones!

"His navy numbers many a bark,
The pride of his throne of thrones:--
Golden by day and fiery by dark,
Each cleaves his pathway like a shark!
But his favourite barge is a dragon-ark,
The fairest ship he owns!


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"The voice of that princess beneath the sea
Reached to his throne of thrones;--
Then he leaped in his barge right gallantly--
And cried, 'My child, come sail with me,
We will flash to sunward far and free,
Till love for thy grief atones!'"

The skipper ceased. 'Twas but a lull
In the gale of song! With bosom full
As some gigantic organ-bellows,
Worked by the hands of officious fellows,
While the priest at the altar white
Is slowly chanting a sacred rite,
The monk burst forth with a gusty roar,
That seemed to echo along the shore:--

"An abbot dwelt beneath the sea
In a cloister of shell and weed;--
Its walls of curious masonry
Were built by the ocean peasantry,

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Those merman slaves, whose supple knee
Loves best a mysterious creed.

"And he was so virtuous, the story runs,
In his cloister of shell and weed--
That the pious mermen, fathers and sons,
Their daughters and sisters, the fairest ones,
Brought to his charge, till a thousand nuns
Chanted his mystical creed.

"And he had control of a thousand friars,
In his cloister of shell and weed;--
He taught them to chasten all worldly desires,
To smother with prayer all carnal fires;--
Not to be drunkards, and not to be liars,
Or gluttons of boundless greed!

"And warned them,--but this was a slander base,--
In his cloister of shell and weed,--
Not to be like that earthly race
