I said: Go up, dear heart, through the waves; Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves! Children dear, were we long alone? The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan; Come!" I said; and we rose through the surf in the bay. 60 65 70 From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers, The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan." We climb'd on the graves, on the stones worn with rains, And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes. 75 But, ah, she gave me never a look, 80 For her eyes were seal'd to the holy book! Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door. Come away, children, call no more! Come away, come down, call no more! Down, down, down! Down to the depths of the sea! She sits at her wheel in the humming town, 85 For the humming street, and the child with its toy! 90 For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well; For the wheel where I spun, And the blessed light of the sun!" And so she sings her fill, Singing most joyfully, Till the spindle drops from her hand, 95 And the whizzing wheel stands still. She steals to the window, and looks at the sand, From a sorrow-clouded eye, A long, long sigh; For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden And the gleam of her golden hair. 100 105 Over banks of bright seaweed We will gaze, from the sand-hills, At the white, sleeping town; At the church on the hill-side And then come back down. Singing: "There dwells a loved one, She left lonely for ever The kings of the sea." 135 140 BROWNING. A TRANSCRIPT FROM EURIPIDES. THERE slept a silent palace in the sun, "What now may mean the silence at the door? I dare not hope: It cannot be, the dead is forth and gone. So worthy, unescorted to the grave? Before the gates I see no hallowed vase Of fountain water, such as suits death's door; Though surely these drop when we grieve the dead, 5 ΙΟ 15 20 25 - The women's way. And yet the appointed time So wailed they, while a sad procession,wound Her last — and let the living look their last "Sun, and thou light of day, and heavenly dance 30 35 40 45 Sun that sees thee and me, a suffering pair, Who did the Gods no wrong whence thou should'st die!") Then, as if caught up, carried in their course, Fleeting and free as cloud and sunbeam are, She missed no happiness that lay beneath: 66 “O thou wide earth, from these my palace roofs, To distant nuptial chambers once my own In that Iolkos of my ancestry!” There the flight failed her. "Raise thee, wretched one! Give us not up! Pray pity from the Gods!" 66 Vainly Admetos: for "I see it see The two-oared boat! The ferryer of the dead, -Why delayest thou? A bitter voyage this to undergo, 50 55 Even the telling! Adverse Powers above, |