Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 5.djvu/668

628 There was no time to pause—the foes were near—

Chains in his eye, and menace in his ear;

With vigour they pulled on, and as they came,

Hailed him to yield, and by his forfeit name.

Headlong he leapt—to him the swimmer's skill

Was native, and now all his hope from ill:

But how, or where? He dived, and rose no more;

The boat's crew looked amazed o'er sea and shore.

There was no landing on that precipice,

Steep, harsh, and slippery as a berg of ice.

They watched awhile to see him float again,

But not a trace rebubbled from the main:

The wave rolled on, no ripple on its face,

Since their first plunge recalled a single trace;

The little whirl which eddied, and slight foam,

That whitened o'er what seemed their latest home,

White as a sepulchre above the pair

Who left no marble (mournful as an heir)

The quiet Proa wavering o'er the tide

Was all that told of Torquil and his bride;

And but for this alone the whole might seem

The vanished phantom of a seaman's dream.

They paused and searched in vain, then pulled away;

Even Superstition now forbade their stay.

Some said he had not plunged into the wave,

But vanished like a corpse-light from a grave;

Others, that something supernatural

Glared in his figure, more than mortal tall;

While all agreed that in his cheek and eye

There was a dead hue of Eternity.

Still as their oars receded from the crag,

Round every weed a moment would they lag,

Expectant of some token of their prey;

But no—he had melted from them like the spray.

V.

And where was he the Pilgrim of the Deep,

Following the Nereid? Had they ceased to weep

For ever? or, received in coral caves,

Wrung life and pity from the softening waves?