• “Though naught for the poor corpse lying here
• Remain to-day but the cold white bier,
• But burial-chaunt and bended knee,
• But sighs and tears that heaviest be,
• But rent rose-flower and rosemary.”

 

• We, cast forth from the Beryl,
• Gyre-circling spirits of fire,
• Whose pangs begin
• With God's grace to sin,
• For whose spent powers the immortal hours are
• sterile,—
• Woe! must We behold this mother
• Find grace in her dead child's face, and doubt of
• none other
• But that perfect pardon, alas! hath assured her
• guerdon?
• Woe! must We behold this daughter,
• 10 Made clean from the soil of sin wherewith We had
• fraught her,

   

• An instant shriek that sprang to the shock
• As the ship's keel felt the sunken rock.

• 90'Tis said that afar—a shrill strange sigh—
• The King's ships heard it and knew not why.

• Pale Fitz-Stephen stood by the helm
• 'Mid all those folk that the waves must whelm.

• A great King's heir for the waves to whelm,
• And the helpless pilot pale at the helm!

• The ship was eager and sucked athirst,
• By the stealthy stab of the sharp reef pierc'd:

• And like the moil round a sinking cup,
• The waters against her crowded up.

• 100A moment the pilot's senses spin,—
• The next he snatched the Prince 'mid the din,
• Cut the boat loose, and the youth leaped in.

• A few friends leaped with him, standing near.
• “Row! the sea's smooth and the night is clear!”

• “What! none to be saved but these and I?”
• “Row, row as you'd live! All here must die!”

• Out of the churn of the choking ship,
• Which the gulf grapples and the waves strip,
• They struck with the strained oars' flash and dip.

• 110'Twas then o'er the splitting bulwarks' brim
• The Prince's sister screamed to him.