Slowly and soothingly stole on my ear Strains such as spirits in ecstasy hear, When they tune their harps at the jasper throne Of eternal light, with its rainbow zone; And the harmony drawn from those living strings Gushes forth from the fountain whence music springs; But those songs divine, of heavenly birth, Are seldom repeated to sons of earth. Such sounds as I heard by that summer sea Were never produced by man's minstrelsy; Which rose and sank by the billowy motion Of the breaking wave and the heaving ocean: Now borne on the night-breeze was wafted high, Through the glowing depths of the star-lit sky; Now mournfully wailing, like plaintive dirge, Rushed to the shore, with the rush of the surge.
And I saw a figure, all radiantly bright, Float over the waves in the pale moonlight; She moved to the notes of a magical song, And the billows scarce murmured that bore her along; The winds became mute--and the snowy wreath, That crested the billows, looked dim beneath Her silvery feet--that as lightly trod The heaving deep, as the emerald sod. A garland of coral her temples bound, And her glittering robes floated lightly round, Veiling her form in a shadowy shroud, Like the mist that hangs on the morning cloud, Ere the sun dispels, with his rising beam, The vapours exhaled from the marshy stream. The breeze wafted back from her forehead fair Her long flowing tresses of shining hair, Which cast on her features a lambent glow, Like a halo encircling her brow of snow; Revealing a face of such faultless mould As that sea-born goddess possessed of old, The morning she rose from the purple tide, The queen of beauty and joy's fair bride-- But her cheek was as pale as the ocean spray Ere it catches a flush from the rosy day; And the shade of a deathless grief was there, Which spake more of ages than years of care; As though she had borne, since the world began, Every sorrow and trial that waits upon man.
Such was the shadow that haunted my dream; Such was the figure that rose from the stream; And I felt a strange and electric thrill Of unearthly delight my bosom fill, As she neared the shore, and I heard the strain That charmed into silence the listening main.
Child of the earth! behold in me The desolate spirit of things that were: I keep Oblivion's iron key, Far, far below in the pathless sea, Where never a sound from the upper air Is heard in those realms where, in darkness hurled, Lie the shattered domes of the ancient world!