• Her lute hangs shadowed in the apple-tree,
• Whole flashing fingers weave the sweet-strung spell
• Between its chords; and as the wild notes swell
• The sea-bird for those branches leaves the sea.
• But to what sound her listening ear stoops she?
• What netherworld gulf-whispers doth she hear?
• In answering echoes from what planisphere,
• Along the wind, along the estuary?

• She sinks into the spell: and when full soon
• 10Her lips move and she soars into her song,
• What creatures of the midmost main shall throng
• In furrowed surf-clouds to the summoning rune:
• Till he, the fated mariner, hears her cry,
• And up her rock, bare-breasted, comes to die?

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D G Rossetti April 1870