I. THERE lies betwixt dead Pisa and the sea | |
| A haunted forest, with a heart so deep, | |
| That none could sit beneath its pines to weep, | |
| But it would throb for them mysteriously. | |
| Here, in this place I dreamed there met with me | 5 |
| The spirit who his part in it doth keep, | |
| Albeit his starry orbit now hath sweep | |
| As vast as Galileo’s, if more free. | |
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| He drew me on to where the hollow beat | |
| Of waves upon a shore seemed to my mind | 10 |
| The moan of a remorseful soul, to meet | |
| The homicidal Sea, whose passion blind | |
| Had slain him; as it writhed about my feet | |
| Methought his spirit past me on the wind. | |
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II. Wild sea, that drank his life to quench the thirst | 15 |
| Thou had’st of him; and all devouring Fire, | |
| Who made his body thine with love as dire; | |
| Air pregnate with his breath, and thou accurst, | |
| Mother of Sorrows, Earth, whose claim is first | |
| Upon thy children dead, who from the pyre | 20 |
| Received his dust,—what did his soul require— | |
| Wring from ye—ere your Protean bonds he burst? | |
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| Perchance ye failed to reach him, and he hath | |
| O’er-leapt the rounds of change the earthlier dead | |
| May weary through, nor needing Lethean bath | 25 |
| To speed anew his soul’s etherial tread, | |
| Hath left the elements, spurned from his path, | |
| To challenge grosser spirits in his stead. | |
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