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(From The Bride of Abydos, Canto II)
I. THE WINDS are high on Helle’s wave, | |
| As on that night of stormy water, | |
| When Love, who sent, forgot to save | |
| The young, the beautiful, the brave, | |
| The lonely hope of Sestos’ daughter. | 5 |
| O, when alone along the sky | |
| Her turret-torch was blazing high, | |
| Though rising gale and breaking foam | |
| And shrieking sea-birds warned him home | |
| And clouds aloft and tides below, | 10 |
| With signs and sounds, forbade to go, | |
| He could not see, he would not hear, | |
| Or sound or sign foreboding fear; | |
| His eye but saw that light of love, | |
| The only star it hailed above; | 15 |
| His ear but rang with Hero’s song, | |
| “Ye waves, divide not lovers long!” | |
| That tale is old, but love anew | |
| May nerve young hearts to prove as true. | |
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II. The winds are high, and Helle’s tide | 20 |
| Rolls darkly heaving to the main; | |
| And night’s descending shadows hide | |
| That field with blood bedewed in vain, | |
| The desert of old Priam’s pride; | |
| The tombs, sole relics of his reign, | 25 |
| All,—save immortal dreams that could beguile | |
| The blind old man of Scio’s rocky isle! | |
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III. O yet,—for there my steps have been! | |
| These feet have pressed the sacred shore, | |
| These limbs that buoyant wave hath borne,— | 30 |
| Minstrel! with thee to muse, to mourn, | |
| To trace again those fields of yore, | |
| Believing every hillock green | |
| Contains no fabled hero’s ashes, | |
| And that around the undoubted scene | 35 |
| Thine own “broad Hellespont” still dashes, | |
| Be long my lot! and cold were he | |
| Who there could gaze denying thee! | |
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